Discussion with Sally Fallon

What is vitamin C? Is there such a thing as a vitamin C complex? Why do so many people now believe in the complex?

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Discussion with Sally Fallon

Post Number:#1  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:32 am

The Nature of Vitamin C paper is approaching publication. This thread documents our email discussion with Sally Fallon and Dr. Cowan which identifies the specific errors in her book written with Dr. Cowan (Four Fold Path to Healing).

From SAFallon@aol.com Thu Jun 8 14:43:03 2006
From: SAFallon@aol.com
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 15:42:54 EDT
Subject: Re: question
To: fonorow



Could you tell me what this is all about?? Sally

Tom,

Thank you for bringing this questionable information to the attention
of the Vitamin C Foundation, and thanks for the fax of page 23,
Nutrition Healing the Physical Body. However, I don't see any authors name, so I have to take your word that Sally Fallon has endorsed this information about vitamin C.

I hope not because Sally and The Weston Price Foundation have quite a reputation, and something like this might seriously damage it.

Also, I was looking for the references page so I might dig in to the
science behind the analysis. This sounds exactly like the misinformation about Vitamin C that has been disseminated by another respected source in the nutrition industry - Standard Process. When they get something so wrong about vitamin C, all their writings and analysis come in to question.

Let me say that the Foundation has addressed the media reports on
which much of this is based, and these reports were false. False
in the sense that the 'harm' attributed to vitamin C never occured.
For example, findings about DNA damage (Lunec Letter to a Journal, later retracted) and "atherosclerosis" (minutes of an AHA meeting, but never published in Journal) were bogus, but made news because the vitamin C harming anyone or any thing other than a virus is news.

As I mentioned, false information about the "true" vitamin C being
a "complex" prevented the National Foundation for Alternative Medicine from conducting a study of the Pauling Vitamin C therapy for heart and cardiovascular disease!! This Foundation parroted these same words, that vitamin C isn't vitamin C!?!, and this ignorance may have shortened the lives of millions.

As our Foundation points out to whomever might be willing to listen, the exact molecular structure of vitamin C is known, Ascorbic Acid, and AA is made by over 99% of all animals now living. THis is the "natural" form of vitamin C, and no animal makes any "complex" in their livers, (The bioflavonoid "complex' only occurs in plants, probably to protect the highly reactive vitamin from oxidizing.) Furthermore, any argument that high amounts of vitamin C is harmful has no real scientific support, and must explain why all the animals (which synthesize AA at between 250 mg and 500 mg per hour! 24/7, do not experience the problems attributed to "mega" vitamin C on page 23 that you faxed to me.

Also note that Standard Process vitamin C products contain the evil synthetic vitamin C - because the vitamin would be lost in almost any process that would try to distill it from a plant. Eat fruit if you want "natural" vitamin C! The problem is that to replace the missing ascorbate caused by the GULO mutation (the reason humans can't make the "vitamin" like all other animals, we'd need to eat hundreds of oranges every day, or suffer the body compensating for less vitamin C -- lp(a) induced atheroclerosis.

As more vitamin C experts are learning about our new forum
http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/forum
we are getting advice and opinions about vitamin C from around
the world. We would welcome Sally, or Dr. Cowen, or any other
person who wants to present contrary ideas, as they will be
tested by many many minds. The objective is the truth about
vitamin C

Owen Fonorow
Vitamin C Foundation



Last edited by ofonorow on Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Email 2

Post Number:#2  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:34 am


From SAFallon@aol.com Fri Jun 9 09:12:53 2006
From: SAFallon@aol.com
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 10:12:42 EDT
Subject: Re: question
To: fonorow
Cc: thomas_skye@hotmail.com


The book is the Fourfold Path to Healing, pages 20-21 and it cites a September 1999 Cancer Research study showing that high dose vitamin C supplementation can accelerate the progression of atherosclerosis by increasing the rate of intimal thickening; and also the Los Angeles Atherosclerosis Study 2000
which found that high dose vitamin C can interfere with DNA

Cowan also cites Szentz Giorgi as supportive of food-based sources of vitamin C--I will read the article by him you sent.

A major theme of this book is that it is better to get our vitamins as
complexes from food rather than as isolated fractions. Not only vitamin C, but all
the vitamins.

My own experience indicates that low doses of a food-based vitamin C are just as effective and without the side effects of high dose vitamin C.

For many years I took ascorbic acid in high does --1-2000 mg per day--for my allergies. It worked very well most of the time, but I did have other health problems that could possibly have been due to copper deficiency (supposedly one of the side effects of too much ascorbic acid). Once I was stung by about 10 bees and could feel a bad reaction coming on. I took about 10 1000-mg
vitamin C pills, lay down and remained still for about 1 hour. The reaction passed, but I did have a side effects in the form of dryness of the mouth.

Now I take a dehydrated plant-form of vitamin C, about 100 mg per day. It is more effective than the high dose ascorbic acid (I never get allergies now) and the fatigue/anemia I used to suffer (could be due to copper deficiency) is gone. If I get stung by mosquitos or gnats while gardening, I take about 200 mg of this supplement and it works beautifully without any dry mouth or
anything.

So based on my own experience, I feel that the "natural" is better. But I am happy to read any research you want to send me.

Best, Sally
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First Response

Post Number:#3  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:37 am



Hi Sally,

In a nutshell - we object to the idea that vitamin C - ascorbic acid (C6H8O6) - isn't the real vitamin C.

And the idea that high doses of vitamin C are harmful to humans.

Apparently, you and a Dr. Cowen wrote a book (Nutrition Healing the Physical Body), in which page 21 contains misinformation which the Vitamin C Foundation has "corrected" for our readers some time ago.

Mr. Tom G. was reading that book, respects you a great deal, and contacted us about that page .
Owen Fonorow
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Response

Post Number:#4  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:40 am

How many colds do you get a year? It is possible that you are also one of a small minority that can make their own vitamin C.

I never get colds. But please don't post my message to you right now. I want to carefully read everything you sent me. sally


This book has nothing to do with the Weston A. Price Foundation. However, WAPF does endorse food based vitamins, actually superfoods, not fractionated vitamins. That is our philosophy. But there are many others who hold to our views. Sally


Fine, but to our mind this is very important as it is spread across the Internet, probably due to the reputation of Weston Price - as factual.
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Another Email

Post Number:#5  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:43 am


The danger in using false information to butress this position is that I, and others, lose faith in the quality of the rest of the information - which for all we know, may be correct. And people,
including myself, are interested in these ideas - especially about vitamins.



I think that this would make a very good subject for a debate in our
magazine or at our conference. Sally

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Question on Page 21

Post Number:#6  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:45 am


Is there some reason you don't want to defend your writing in a public online forum?

Owen




Owen I didn't write this. Dr. Cowan did.

I am a VERY VERY busy person. I want to read the materials you sent me and I don't have time right this minute. Sally
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WInding up

Post Number:#7  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:59 am

At this point, the discussion moves to the Topic "Discussion with Dr. Cowan"


Picking up with Sally after the lengthy discussion with Dr. Cowan.



Nice deflection (by Dr. Cowan). This would lead to an interesting discussion at our forum. I have not been able to find the "clogged artery" study in a cancer journal referenced on page 20 and 21 of your book.


Here is the rest of Sally's email, (sometime later) for the record
Sally to Dr. Cowan

Good answer. I would just ignore him. But I think you should give him a link to the references. I hope we did not get anything wrong that is making them hard to find. Sally




Here are the two reports. It does seem that the references were reversed.
Will correct this in the next printing. Sally Fallon

#1
Page 20: "The second study, published in Cancer Research, Septmenber 1999,
showed that high-dose vitamin C supplementation can accelerate the progession
of atherosclerosis by increasing the rate of intimal thickening."

Who are the authors of this study and what is the title?

#2
Page 21: "The final and perhaps most daunting report was the Los Angeles
Atherosclerosis Study, published in 2000 (?Where), which concluded that
500 mg vitamin C ingested daily is genotoxic, which means that synthetic
vitamin C can interfere with DNA and potentiate the growth of malignant
tumors"?



_Cancer Res._ (javascript:AL_get(this, 'jour', 'Cancer Res.');) 1999 Sep
15;59(18):4555-8. _Related Articles,_
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... d=10493506) _Links_
(javascript:PopUpMenu2_Set(Menu10493506);)

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/util ... long&pmid=
10493506)
Stromal cell oxidation: a mechanism by which tumors obtain vitamin C.

_Agus DB_
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... ract&term="Agus+DB"[Author]) , _Vera JC_
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... ract&term="
Vera+JC"[Author]) , _Golde DW_
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... ract&term="Golde+DW"[Author]) .

Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York,
New York 10021, USA. d-agus@ski.mskcc.org

Human tumors may contain high concentrations of ascorbic acid, but little is
known about how they acquire the vitamin. Certain specialized cells can
transport ascorbic acid directly through a sodium ascorbate cotransporter, but in
most cells, vitamin C enters through the facilitative glucose transporters
(GLUTs) in the form of dehydroascorbic acid, which is then reduced
intracellularly and retained as ascorbic acid. Mice with established hematopoietic and
epithelial cell xenografts were studied for the accumulation of injected
ascorbic acid and dehydroascorbic acid. Most hematopoietic and epithelial tumor
cell lines can only transport vitamin C in the oxidized form (dehydroascorbic
acid) in vitro; however, when grown as xenografts in mice, they rapidly
accumulated vitamin C after administration of radiolabeled ascorbic acid. The
involvement of the GLUTs in vitamin C uptake by the xenografted tumors was
demonstrated by competitive inhibition with D-glucose but not L-glucose. Because the
malignant cells were not capable of directly transporting ascorbic acid, we
reasoned that the ascorbic acid was oxidized to dehydroascorbic acid in the
tumor microenvironment. Tumor accumulation of vitamin C in animals injected
with ascorbic acid was inhibited by coadministration of superoxide dismutase,
implying a role for superoxide anion in the oxidation of ascorbic acid.
Whereas the epithelial cancer cell lines could not generate superoxide anion in
culture, the minced xenograft tumors did. Our studies show the transport of
dehydroascorbic acid by GLUTs is a means by which tumors acquire vitamin C and
indicate the oxidation of ascorbic acid by superoxide anion produced by cells
in the tumor stroma as a mechanism for generating the transportable form of
the vitamin.

PMID: 10493506 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]





Vitamin C: friend or foe?

_Better Nutrition_ (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FKA) ,
_June, 2000_ (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FKA/is_6_62) by
_Patricia Andersen-Parrado_
(http://www.findarticles.com/p/search?tb=art&qt="Patricia+Andersen-Parrado")


The story behind the headline
Vitamin C is one of those supplements that has always been synonymous with
safe. It's right up there with multi-vitamins in terms of what even
conventional medical doctors routinely advise their patients to take as a kind of
"insurance policy."
So, the recent news that vitamin C supplementation may increase one's risk of
developing atherosclerosis certainly came as a surprise.
This finding was presented at the American Heart Association's 40th Annual
Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.
While interesting, it is important to note that this paper has not yet been
published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. And, there are prominent
nutrition experts who cast doubt on the findings.
In this study, the researchers measured the thickness of the wall of a neck
artery on 573 healthy men aged 40 to 60 over an 18-month-period. They found
that the men who took 500 mg of vitamin C daily had an increase in arterial
wall thickness that was 2.5 times greater than men who did not use supplements.


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Asking for Permission to Post

Post Number:#8  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 9:01 am


First, may we post this? Thank you in advance.

Second, you are right. Poor choice of words on my part. I meant to say before we APPEAR to attack you or Sally over the description of vitamin C on pages 20 and 21.

If posting this on our forum is okay with you, then I'll respond to your scenario there - in public.
Owen



This is an interesting reply from Tom and I think it would be great if Tom (Cowan) says to post it.

Today I read the 1937 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech by Albert Szent Giorgi. On page 448 he says that his colleague suffering from "serious haemorrhagic diathesis" was cured with paprika but not with ascorbic acid. He then goes on to discuss the role of flavanoids always associated with vitamin C in food. So this would seem to support the arguments of Tom and myself. Sally
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More for the record

Post Number:#9  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 9:04 am

Page 21. Quote "He (Albert SZent-Giorgi) maintained, as did Royal Lee, that the "whole complex of substances found in vitamin-rich foods is the active ingredient that can cure scurvy." .."

This is a direct quote attribued to Dr. AS-G. Please provide the reference.


The reference for this one is in the article you sent me, Dr. S-Gs 1937 speech. Will get back to you on the others. Sally


our quarrel is with the definition of thesubstance the cures scurvy. Can we go public?

Your quarrel seems to be that you are promoting high doses of ascorbic acid and we suggest small amounts of natural vitamin C. they both cure scurvy but this is the first time I have heard this word in this debate. Mostly high doses of ascorbic acid are promoted to avoid colds and protect against heart
disease. We are concerned about side effects. Fine to post my comments you will have to ask Tom about his. sally

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Tracking down the quote

Post Number:#10  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 9:07 am

Sorry to quibble, but I did not find that quote.


The quote is:

"This colleague himself suffered from a serious haemorrhagic diathesis. Since I still did not have enough of this crystalline substance at my disposal then, I sent him paprikas. My colleague was cured. But later we tried in vain to obtain the same therapeutic effect with vitamin C."
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References were in error

Post Number:#11  Post by ofonorow » Thu Jan 04, 2007 9:43 am


To summarize our discourse.

1. The Cowan/Fallon references regarding the alleged harm of vitamin C as ascorbic acid were erroneous.
2. Even corrected, these two reference do not support that notion that ascorbic acid (the synthetic vitamin C isolate as naturalists call it) is harmful. Both articles are invalid, (one having been retracted) and these fallacies have both been covered extensively at this web site:
3. They did not respond to our queries about the string of errors in their description of vitamin C on pages 20 and 21. Instead, these two authors seemed content raising their own questions about the idea that ascorbic acid, in the amounts Pauling, Levy and others advocate, has any benefit.
4. The discussion with Fallon and Cowan was of no help determining what the C-complex is. They declined to provide any support what-so-ever that such a thing as a C complex exists.
5. They incorrectly cite Dr. S. Giorgi. as a source for the idea that ascorbic acid isn’t vitamin C, and returned my own reference to the Nobel Lecture as their source, (And as we have discussed, this reference is taken out of context and is diametrically opposed to the finding that ascorbic acid is vitamin C, that resulted in the Nobel prize.)

and Sally promises to correct this, and consider this exchange in the next printing of their book.


We will take your remarks into consideration when we reprint. Sally
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Catherine in Chicago

thanks for posting these dialogues, certainly explains a lot

Post Number:#12  Post by Catherine in Chicago » Thu Jan 04, 2007 7:34 pm

I spent a ridiculous amount of time and money on complex c without benefit. Ridiculous in that a deceitful product with a deceitful purpose was deliberately presented to misinform consumers for profit and undeserved recognition. (Isn't that fraud on multiple levels?) If neither ascorbic acid or complex c were helping together or separate, I must be on the wrong track altogether. Right? All vitamins and supplements were discontinued until I could sort some things out. Meantime, "natural vitamin c" in the form of a good diet just wasn't cutting it.

The FDA, doctors and nutritionists may be the only valid authorities, except their information didn't work for us. I am considering going to a Naturopathic college because I cannot trust doctors to treat me or my family. Trying to believe helped us maintain health concerns instead of resolving them, and nearly total distrust of medical professionals.

Deception regarding efficacy of ascorbic acid vs "real vitamin c" or complex c is a perfect example of how doubts are sowed throughout the National Medical Libraries, another glorified failure. These days when pub med and NIH materials are referred to as pearls of truth, I get a fleeting vision of a virtual bonfire. I use them because it's good to know what the other side is doing; always expecting lies and traps.

The disingenuous dodging of Sally Fallon and Tom Cowan is disheartening and nauseating. There is room to profit with truth and integrity. Now it would appear that complex c was just a nice trip to the bank for short term thinkers. Business as usual, isn't it?

After reading these few communications I am sorry I bought one of Sally Fallon's books and, more than ever, I doubt the information provided. On the bright side, at least I can discuss it. As for Tom Cowan, if he has useful information to offer, I wouldn't recognize it or be able to trust it.

Regarding Sally Fallon's anecdotes, if personal experience serves as proof or evidence I have quite a lot to share. Maybe I should write a book.

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Don't throw away your copy of Nourishing Traditions

Post Number:#13  Post by Ralph Lotz » Thu Jan 04, 2007 11:57 pm

Sally Fallon has done much to raise people's conciousness about the value of eating good clean foods prepared in the traditional manner. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. Getting the bulk of our nutrients from our foods is a great goal.

However there are millions of people living in urban areas that do not have access to wholesome organic produce, free range chickens or grass fed beef at affordable prices. We are stuck with commercial-crapola.
Supplements are cheap insurance.

Sally and her colleague, Mary Enig, PhD have been pioneers in bringing us transfats awareness and the de-villainization of saturated fats.
Let's not throw away the baby with the bath water.
"Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution...medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship..force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what..dictating outfit offers." Dr. Benjamin Rush

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I'm still a Big Fan

Post Number:#14  Post by ofonorow » Fri Jan 05, 2007 10:17 am

The disingenuous dodging of Sally Fallon and Tom Cowan is disheartening and nauseating. There is room to profit with truth and integrity. Now it would appear that complex c was just a nice trip to the bank for short term thinkers. Business as usual, isn't it?


I'm still a fan of Sally. I don't think this erroneous information about vitamin C was deliberate, it was based on ignorance. They are part of the solution, not the problem, but they placed their trust in sources that let them down. (I don't know Cowan, or the role he might play in this.)

My guess is source of this erroneous information was Standard Process, but perhaps this company has been duped also. The purpose here is to correct invalid information that has spread like wildfire as "fact."
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BimLanders

Post Number:#15  Post by BimLanders » Fri Jan 05, 2007 11:20 am

I agree with Lotz. Let's not bash Sally Fallon over her disagreements with vitamin C, wrong as they are. I, for one, would love to see the copper deficieny issue resolved. Second, The Weston A. Price Foundation is an invaulable tool for nutirtional knowledge. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't know about the dangers of poorly prepared whole grains and nuts. I tried soaking and dehydrating raw nuts and not only did they taste delicious, but they didn't leave me with digestive trouble that I usually associate with raw nuts. This website also was instrumental in my acceptance that animal fat can be vital to good health, which is the opposite of what the mainstream tells us.


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