Last week, my ds16 had tonsillitis. I can’t remember any of the kids ever having tonsillitis before; they tend to just get generic colds that don’t last long when they do come down with something. I’m very inclined to believe that it’s not a coincidence that he got such a bad case now since he recently came off of antibiotics from having his wisdom teeth out.
This was only the second time in his life he had antibiotics; the other eight kids have never had any antibiotics at all. (I unfortunately didn’t realize he’d have the antibiotics prescribed for this and hadn’t researched how to deal with it in advance.) As everyone knows, antibiotics kill off bacteria, good and bad, and it leaves a person’s immune system weakened afterwards, which is why people often get sick again once they come off the antibiotics.
Ds was feeling really horrible, and I suggested a few things to him, one of which was a specific dosage of vitamin C to take. The next day, he wasn’t feeling much better, which surprised me somewhat, but the body takes time to heal and it’s unreasonable to expect it to be instantaneous. The following morning (ie day 3) when he still felt sick, I asked him how much vitamin C he had taken the day before. He told me he didn’t take any after the first day. I strongly told him he needed to take some right that minute; I think he took 20 grams (20,000 mg) and then an hour or two later another 20 grams.
A few hours later he told me he couldn’t believe it, but he felt drastically better (he had been in a lot of pain, stiff neck, hard to swallow). The next day when I mentioned an alternative remedy for something, this son said, “Mommy, if you say it, I believe you. I’m not going to doubt you again. That vitamin C was totally amazing!”
Most people don’t realize that there are differences in how vitamin C is metabolized by the body, and the specific form you take is imortant. Sodium ascorbate is the best form to take. Unfortunately, you will rarely find it in your local health food store. And if your experience is anything like mine, the people who work there won’t have any idea what you’re talking about when you ask for it. We buy our sodium ascorbate in the kilo sized container online.
The other thing people don’t realize is how much you need to take. Most people will take one or two doses of 1000 mg when they’re under the weather. That’s not going to do much. You’d be shocked by how much vitamin C the body needs when it’s fighting off a cold. I told ds how much I wanted him to take and he thought it was way too much, but I told him if he was showing bowel tolerance that his body was using every bit of it. (I read somewhere the Linus Pauling – winner of two Nobel prizes who did lots of research on vitamin C- would take 16 grams daily when well and up to 110 grams when ill!)
If you want to figure out the dosage in a more formal way than bowel tolerance, here are a couple of guidelines that I’ve seen recommended. First of all, you need to figure out the body weight of the person in question in kilograms. To do that, divide the weight in pounds by 2.2 to get the weight by kilograms. Multiply the weight in kg x 100 (some say 200 so this is conservative) for the minimum mg per day. For babies, it’s a little different: 200 – 375 mg per kg of body weight. We stir the crystals it into a little bit of juice and it’s easy to take like that, even for the little ones.
There’s lots of interesting reading available about vitamin C and how effective it is in supporting the body to heal many different diseases, but I’ll give you just one site to get you started if you want to learn more. I haven’t read even a fraction of what there is to learn about vitamin C. But knowing what I do, it’s very comforting to have it in my arsenal against sickness. 🙂
(This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays and Works for Me Wednesdays.)
Avivah
