Hello Owen,
OK, let's see if some sanity (and science) can be restored to this thread. It's perfectly fine for individuals to seek out information and offer their perspectives, but it is quite another thing to offer harmful advice when one just has a feeling that something must be so. It's tough enough to be any kind of patient these days, without having to deal with someone goading you to pursue the exact opposite advice of what is best.
Vitamin C helps normalize iron levels in individuals who are iron-depleted, reducing Fe3+ to Fe2+, a better absorbed form of iron. Furthermore, the vitamin C must be in contact with the absorbable iron, or the effect won't occur. Even if there were a legitimate concern over the interaction of vitamin C and iron, staggering the times of intake of the two would obviate the need for concern. To cut back on the intake of the most important antioxidant available to let oxidative stress somehow become "reduced" on its own defies logic and is patently reckless. Even if (for the sake of argument) more iron (above normal levels) was coming in with more vitamin C, the damage inflicted by any excess iron already present in the body would literally explode if vitamin C intake was instead severely curtailed. A persistent fable is that megadoses of vitamin C becomes "prooxidant." Quite the opposite. When smaller doses of vitamin C (a few hundred milligrams) increase oxidative stress via Fenton chemistry, the only way to get the resulting oxidative stress down is with much larger doses of vitamin C, not less.
Iron in the blood vessel is probably the most important accelerator of coronary heart disease. It is the final common denominator for the majority of oxidative stress generated in the arterial wall or anywhere else it is in excess. Elevated levels of iron (ferritin) reliably increase the rate of atherosclerosis. Even under 100 ng/cc ferritin, atherosclerosis will significantly lessen as the ferritin levels drops a few more points, and reliably increases as it increases only a few points. Mind you, 100 ng/cc is a "low normal" level of ferritin as measured in most laboratories today. Remember that all tests aim to make a majority of the population normal, which assumes that a majority of the population is normal, an egregiously incorrect assumption.
In the past, our forefathers exercised a lot, and sweated their iron out regularly to maintain a reasonable equilibrium. But most importantly, they weren't being force-fed iron in every processed food there is, especially pasta, cereals, rice, and you-name-it. Just because some third-world country populations have a great deal of iron deficiency anemia, our public health geniuses decided they would "prevent" any such condition from ever occuring in the United States by overdosing us on iron. On my website,
http://www.peakenergy.com , you can see the video demonstrating the metallic iron filings that can easily be extracted from the cereal so many eat every day. Where do you think that crap goes? Answer, into storage. So now, we don't exercise, we don't sweat, and we consume iron that subsequently can't possibly be excreted by our bodies, except for the pre-menstrual ladies, who have a physiological phlebotomy every month. Ever wonder why the ladies live longer than the men? Less accumulated iron over their lives is the main reason.
You don't want any more iron than it takes to maintain a normal hemoglobin level. In fact, even small accumulations of iron are so toxic and so undesirable in the overall acceleration of aging, your overall health would probably optimized if you have the indications of an early, or minimal, iron deficiency anemia. There is a lot of controversy over what is definitively an anemic level of hemoglobin. When you are in the "low normal" levels of hemoglobin, and a few small and pale red blood cells (microcytic, hypochromic) appear on a blood smear and your ferritin is 15 ng/cc, you are, more or less, enjoying optimally minimized body stores of iron.
Now, anybody who thinks all is this is ridiculous is welcome to their thoughts, and I won't be offended by whatever tangents subsequently evolve in this, or other, threads. Just remember this is a scientific blog, not a political or a travel blog, and people are hoping to improve their health by reading what is offered.
So, guys and gals of the forum, explore everything that merits exploration. But be a little more guarded in giving advice (as in no advice at all) to individuals who are trying to cope with important health issues (progressive atherosclerosis) when you really have no expertise in that area. A doctor like myself is wrong more than I care to admit, but I am always striving to understand pathophysiology through the scientific method, not by convenient hunch. I'll certainly have comments in the future, but rarely this extensive. My research and time involved took more than an hour for this entry, and I don't intend to do that on a regular basis. A concept such as the importance of de-ironing the body needs to be read by many thousands of people (or even more), not a hundred or so. I put a great deal of effort into my research and writings, and I want as many people to benefit as possible. This forum is great, but it cannot disseminate information like a best-selling book or a well-placed article. I gave a little advice early-on in this thread, and I felt obliged to have a reasonable follow-up and follow-through on what I initially wrote.
Best regards,
Dr. Levy