This summer I attended a talk given by an orthomolecular physician for parents of children with Trisomy 21 and afterwards spoke with him one on one. It came up in discussion that a family member of his had cancer and was healed using high dosage intravenous vitamin C.
Knowing how effective this is in healing cancer since I’ve done quite a bit of reading on this topic in the past, the good results were predictable. My big question was, how was he able to have this protocol used with his relative!
He told me that it helps being a physician. 🙂 Unfortunately I’m not a physician but at least I now know someone in Israel who has used this tool!
In a new documentary titled That Vitamin Movie, the message is about the efficacy of vitamins in maintaining health and healing illness. (It’s free to view for about another week and a half.)
The person who made this documentary began his journey of exploration of this topic when a friend of his was helped with depression by changing his diet and getting supplements. As he researched, he found more and more stories of those recovering with help of large doses of vitamins much larger than the daily recommended amounts.
The approach of conventional medicine is to treat the symptoms, not to get to the root of what is causing the problem. I regularly ask the doctors or dentists that I take my children to why they are having the issue we are there for, and I’ve consistently been told: “That’s the way it is. Sometimes this happens.”
The response is to prescribe medication, surgery, dental work. But the question remains, why is the problem happening? If you don’t address the root issue that the symptoms are stemming from, you’ll continue to see health issues coming up. And if you go the route of medication, often the side effects of one medication lead to the need for the prescription of another, and so on.
It was to explore some of these questions that this man said he set out to interview some of the world’s vitamin experts.
Dr. Andrew Saul commented in the beginning of his film that he raised his children to college without antibiotics and says very few people can say that – but I can! I only have three children of college age, but 2 of the 3 haven’t had any antibiotics. The third had them twice. Ds16 was treated with antibiotics when he had a hip infection (I wished at the time I had access to high potency intravenous vitamin C because we weren’t able to give high enough doses orally of vitamin C to counter the infection), and other than ds3, the others haven’t had any. Bli ayin hara.
By the way, this was an issue for a potential shidduch once. The other side found out that we prefer to use natural antibiotics rather than prescription drugs to deal with illness and this was problematic for them. I had to explain to the shadchan that we’re not dogmatic about this, and that although we have used medications at time, we’ve found this approach most effective to help our family stay healthy.
I think if people understood how much research there was on the use of vitamin C alone and read even a fraction of this, they wouldn’t see the use of it as extreme but rather as logical and self-apparent why it would be the preferred approach.
(While vitamin C is repeatedly mentioned in this film, it’s not the only supplement recommended. However, almost six years ago I wrote a detailed post with specifics of how to dose vitamin C and if you’re interested you can read it here.)
This film is a consciousness raising of the benefits of using vitamins for the average person. Vitamins can be amazingly effective in treating a huge spectrum of issues: some of those referenced by the experts in this film include depression, cancer, heart disease and ADHD. Though I’m familiar with all the information shared, I’m feeling prompted to mentally dust off that knowledge and be more conscientious about applying it.
Wishing you all abundant health – enjoy the film!
Avivah
I read your post since I love what you write and your’e approach to life, but I remember consulting with a few conventional doctors about high does of Vitamin C when I had mumps and they did not recommend it! They said at such high doses Vit. C can cause poisening in the body and other dangerous conditions – proven! You have good good experience with Vit. C. but is it good for all?
I’m so curious to really know what is the truth…
Hi, T, welcome!
A lack of vitamin C is very dangerous and leads to all kind of illnesses and even death. The way to know that you’ve had enough and should cut back is if you reach bowel tolerance (loose stools).
I would think you can google and get the reports from the US National Poison Control Centers and see how many people have been poisoned by vitamins. You can look at the research of Dr. Linus Pauling. You can look at the research of all the doctors quoted in the movie (did you watch it yet?), and look at the research of the doctors they reference. These are the people who have spent their lives studying the science relating to vitamins, and these are the doctors whose statements I take seriously.
I’ve made the decisions that I do based on what seems right to me, based on my research. I don’t tell anyone else what to do. 🙂
There is a man on our Yeshuv here in the North who cured his cancer with bee stings. He is writing a book about it. Vitamin C sounds less painful. I will let you know more about the bee stings cure when his book is finished.
That’s something I’ve never heard of, Beth! Yes, vitamin C definitely sounds less painful. 🙂 But I’d be interested to hear about how it worked for him.
There is a famous book by Norman Cousins about this. It’s called “anatomy of an illness”.
I remember he wrote about the power of laughter in healing but it’s been a long time ago so I didn’t remember him also writing about vitamins. Thanks for mentioning it! This information has been available for a long time but the average person doesn’t have many opportunities to casually come across it.
I’m not really comfortable with someone who is not a doctor dispensing medical advice on the Internet. I have a child on the autistic spectrum and have seen with my own eyes how often doctors don’t know it all- I have no false illusions about the infallibility of doctors, believe me. But your blanket statement that massive doses of vitamin c are harmless could really hurt someone. I was looking at the Mayo Clinic website, and they list quite a few complications that could arise from taking too much vitamin c in drug form. I can’t believe that the Mayo clinic of all places would be 100% wrong about this. Are you, someone who is not in the medical profession, really 100% comfortable telling people to take massive doses of vitamin c, seeing how there is at least a very reasonable chance you could be wrong? I hope no one reads your advice, takes it and suffers any negative consequences.
The point of this post was to share about a movie that is filled with specific suggestions made by doctors about how much of various vitamins to use, and the comments I made were all in line with what the doctors said.
Laura, I’m not dispensing advice – I’m sharing what *I* do. Do you really think that anyone who isn’t a medical doctor shouldn’t be able to share a perspective or experience? I’ve constantly said in the past as well as in the comments above and will continue to say that every person needs to do his own research and come to his own conclusions.
(I’m not sure what you mean about taking vitamin C in drug form. What is drug form? My comments were about taking vitamin C in vitamin form.)
Sorry, I meant taking it in supplements as opposed to eating foods high in vitamin c.
You say you’re not dispensing advice, and you do make sure to say that this is just what you and your family does, but in the second comment to this post you claim that it’s impossible to get poisoned from too much vitamin c, and that any excess is harmless because your body will just flush it out. People could read that and start taking massive doses of vitamin c, and perhaps harm themselves because what you said might not be 100% true 100% of the time. Hopefully people will do more research than just reading one person’s blog when they need medical guidance.
hi i believe he said until bowel tolerance which is safe, if you continue taking vit c and are experiencing loose bowl motions, then that is an indication to stop as you can get negative effects from that point on wards… his advice is sound and even though he is not a medical doctor sometimes (most times) doctors do not know a lot about vitamins or how drugs effect nutrients and other processes in the body, as a pharmaceutical technician and natural health consultant i know this first hand, you know your body best and if you listen to it you can not go wrong (listening to it for example, when you have loose bowel from taking a supplement like vit c or magnesium), believe me you know yourself better then any doctor 🙂
Thank you for showing me that I wasn’t clear enough, Laura. I will edit the above comment to avoid confusion, though based on the research I’ve done my statement was scientifically accurate.
The sign that you should stop taking vitamin C is when you reach bowel tolerance – if you get loose stools it’s a sign that your body is flushing the excess and there’s no benefit to taking more.
Yes, hopefully people interested in improving their health will do more research and watching this movie is a good place to get started. Did you see it? There’s also a lot of scientific research on the benefits of vitamin C and concerns about overdose can be researched as well to alleviate concerns that the guidelines I use for my family would be harmful to anyone else.
Information like what was shared has been very empowering for my family and helpful in ways that routine use of pharmaceuticals wouldn’t be. Right now I’m in the middle of dealing with something for myself and am very grateful to have alternative tools to help myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZYZXHtq-VU&spfreload=10 – this link is by Dr. Thomas Levy, MD, addressing if vitamin C at extremely high levels can lead to kidney stones or any other damage. He says no, and has medical studies to back up every statement he makes.