Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!bbncca!sdyer From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer) Newsgroups: net.med Subject: Re: Allergies and Treatments Thereof - try Vitamin C Message-ID: <799@bbncca.ARPA> Date: Sat, 23-Jun-84 14:02:17 EDT Article-I.D.: bbncca.799 Posted: Sat Jun 23 14:02:17 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 24-Jun-84 00:06:57 EDT References: <427@ihu1g.UUCP>, <321@nbs-amrf.UUCP> <19625@wivax.UUCP> <1182@ihuxl.UUCP> Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma. Lines: 48 >A drug is something not normally ingested/present-in-the-body. >Would you call someone a drug user if they ingested a lot of >H2O ? There is evidence that we are *supposed* to ingest several grams >of Vitamin C per day. And it doesn't follow that you'll get >kidney stones. As with most discussions which crop up on the net, we often find ourselves wrestling with semantics rather than issues. To clarify, I would define a drug as any substance which exerts a pharmacological action in the body independent of its primary role (if any) in ordinary human physiology. In this sense, I would definitely call the effects of excessive water ingestion sufficient to endanger life a "drug effect", though I would hedge on calling the unfortunate victim a "drug user", a phrase which has acquired extra-medical connotations. In the case of Vitamin C, megadoses not only protect against scurvy, but also begin to effect other physiological systems. In this sense, it could be said to be acting as a "drug." This is a completely neutral term in the medical literature. Unfortunately, the same term dredges up Manichean polarities in certain people's minds: "natural" vs. man-made, "health- giving" vs. health-crippling, "wellness" vs. the spectre of organized medicine. This is fine as religion, politics or philosophy, but it makes for a poor science of nutrition, pharmacology and physiology. With regard to kidney stones: SOME people, not all, get kidney stones after excessive megadoses of Vitamin C. This is to be expected, given the variance in individuals. I end with a quote from Goodman and Gilman, "The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics", 1980 ed., pp. 1579-1580: "...studies [of ascorbic acid in the treatment of colds and viruses and cancer] have yielded negative or inconsistent results. Any benefit which might be derived from such use of ascorbic acid seems small when weighed against the expense and the risks of the megadosage treatment. The latter include formation of kidney stones resulting from excessive excretion of oxalate, rebound scurvy in the offspring of mothers taking high doses, and a similar phenomemon when subjects who are consuming large amounts of vitamin C suddenly stop; a precipitous reduction in ascorbic acid concentration in plasma follows. These rebound phenomena are presumably due to induction of pathways of ascorbic acid metabolism as a result of the preceding high dosage. Excessive doses of ascorbic acid also enhance the absorption of iron [not clear that this is bad-- sdyer] and interfere with anti-coagulant therapy." -- /Steve Dyer {decvax,linus,ima}!bbncca!sdyer sdyer@bbncca.ARPA