Ascorbic Acid versus Natural Vitamin C and C-complex

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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Re: Ascorbic Acid versus Natural Vitamin C and C-complex

Post Number:#16  Post by ToMyFriendsHealth » Sun Sep 11, 2016 7:50 am

From Albert Svent-Gyorgyi's presentation to the Nobel Committee in 1937 before his award for the Nobel Prize. Notice the comments on the vitamin P component. C, I'm sorry, is not ascorbic acid.


...At the time that I had just detected the rich vitamin content of the paprika, I was asked by a colleague of mine for pure vitamin C. This colleague him- self 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 thera- peutic effect with pure vitamin C. Guided by my earlier studies into the peroxidase system, I investigated with my friend St. Rusznyák and his collaborators Armentano and Bentsáth the effect of the other link in the chain, the flavones. Certain members of this group of substances, the flava- none hesperidin (Fig. 5) and the formerly unknown eriodictyolglycoside, a mixture of which we had isolated from lemons and named citrin, now had the same therapeutic effect as paprika itself. It is still too early on in our experience for us to make any definitive statements. But it does seem that these substances possess great biological activity. They influence most ob-

OXIDATION, ENERGY TRANSFER, VITAMINS
449
viously the capillary blood vessels, whose permeability and resistance suffer gravely in many disease states. These dyes are able to restore the state of affairs to normal, and to judge by the first experiences, it seems that these substances will enrich the doctor’s inventory with a really useful new weapon for him to fight illnesses with. Our experiments made it probable that cer- tain members of this group possess vitamin-like properties. For this reason I called the substance vitamin P. Unfortunately these vitamin-like properties have not yet been successfully demonstrated in a completely irreproachable and reproducible fashion....

Notice the comment on the Vitamin P component.

It's a complex and not an isolate.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ ... ecture.pdf

And from the presentation speech by Professor E. Hammarsten, member of the Staff of Professors of the Royal Caroline Institute, on December 10, 1937

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ ... press.html

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Re: Ascorbic Acid versus Natural Vitamin C and C-complex

Post Number:#17  Post by OxC » Mon Jan 16, 2017 4:14 pm

The debate among common folks over synthetic versus natural ascorbic acid continues, while the consensus among scientists is expressed well in the following two quotes from an earlier post:
A. Hoffer wrote:...I was very surprised by the argument that there is only a vitamin C complex and no such substance as vitamin C. In my opinion this is not a scientific matter but an important advertising problem...Synthetic vitamin C is bio-identical...

Steve Lawson wrote:...I was unaware that any such controversy about vitamin C exists. Actually, among scientists, there is no controversy about “natural” and “synthetic” vitamin C: it is exactly the same molecule, regardless of source. As far as vitamin C activity is concerned, the only substance in the so-called “vitamin C complex” that provides this is ascorbic acid. This has been well established for many decades and is not in question among professional scientists.

But most scientists today recognize that "dietary vitamin C" is not synonymous with "dietary ascorbic acid," but is instead "the sum of dietary ascorbic acid and dehydroascorbic acid."

Therefore the question, "Are synthetic and natural ascorbic acid identical?" is not the same question as, "Are synthetic and natural vitamin C identical?" Ascorbic acid as found in food is the same molecule as synthetic ascorbic acid. However, vitamin C as found in food is only partially in the form of ascorbic acid. About 10-20% of the vitamin C we ingest from food is dehydroascorbic acid. For example:
Image
(Table 3 from this paper: An Improved Sample Preparation Method for Quantification of Ascorbic Acid and Dehydroascrobic Acid by HPLC. -- Food Science and Technology (2012)).

The point being that most dietary supplements only provide one of the two common forms of vitamin C found in the diet, and this is the most likely difference in the many studies that have shown better results when vitamin C was taken as food versus supplements. A famous example of a study demonstrating a difference between vitamin C from food (in this case, lemon juice) versus synthetic vitamin C is found here THE INADEQUACY OF SYNTHETIC ASCORBIC ACID AS AN ANTISCORBUTIC AGENT. Elmby and Warburg, The Lancet, (1937)
Douglas Q. Kitt, founder of ReCverin LLC, sellers of stabilized dehydroascorbic acid solutions.

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Re: Ascorbic Acid versus Natural Vitamin C and C-complex

Post Number:#18  Post by samlouis » Wed Feb 07, 2018 10:27 pm

Thank you members, my search is completely fulfilled as I know more coming to this thread. I have lots of information about scurvy and vitamin C.

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Re: Ascorbic Acid versus Natural Vitamin C and C-complex

Post Number:#19  Post by Ralph Lotz » Thu Aug 09, 2018 11:35 am

ToMyFriendsHealth wrote:From Albert Svent-Gyorgyi's presentation to the Nobel Committee in 1937 before his award for the Nobel Prize. Notice the comments on the vitamin P component. C, I'm sorry, is not ascorbic acid.


...At the time that I had just detected the rich vitamin content of the paprika, I was asked by a colleague of mine for pure vitamin C. This colleague him- self 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 thera- peutic effect with pure vitamin C. Guided by my earlier studies into the peroxidase system, I investigated with my friend St. Rusznyák and his collaborators Armentano and Bentsáth the effect of the other link in the chain, the flavones. Certain members of this group of substances, the flava- none hesperidin (Fig. 5) and the formerly unknown eriodictyolglycoside, a mixture of which we had isolated from lemons and named citrin, now had the same therapeutic effect as paprika itself. It is still too early on in our experience for us to make any definitive statements. But it does seem that these substances possess great biological activity. They influence most ob-

OXIDATION, ENERGY TRANSFER, VITAMINS
449
viously the capillary blood vessels, whose permeability and resistance suffer gravely in many disease states. These dyes are able to restore the state of affairs to normal, and to judge by the first experiences, it seems that these substances will enrich the doctor’s inventory with a really useful new weapon for him to fight illnesses with. Our experiments made it probable that cer- tain members of this group possess vitamin-like properties. For this reason I called the substance vitamin P. Unfortunately these vitamin-like properties have not yet been successfully demonstrated in a completely irreproachable and reproducible fashion....

Notice the comment on the Vitamin P component.

It's a complex and not an isolate.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ ... ecture.pdf

And from the presentation speech by Professor E. Hammarsten, member of the Staff of Professors of the Royal Caroline Institute, on December 10, 1937

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/ ... press.html



On pages 447-448, Szent-Gyorgyi clearly states that "ASCORBIC ACID IS VITAMIN C"
Vitamin P of course is not ascorbic acid, but C6H8O6 is vitamin C whether from an animal, plant or manufacturing plant. (PERIOD) !!!

This was the first proof that ascorbic
acid was identical with vitamin C, and that the substance’s activity
was not due to an impurity. I do not wish to linger any more over this
well-known story, which developed in such a dramatic fashion. Thanks to
international collaboration, in the unbelievably short space of two years the
mysterious vitamin C had become a cheap, synthetic product.
"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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Re: Ascorbic Acid versus Natural Vitamin C and C-complex

Post Number:#20  Post by OxC » Sun Feb 10, 2019 6:37 pm

Studies Confirm: Natural and Synthetic Vitamins Can Differ in Quantity & Quality of Effects! Vitamins A-E, B's & More
Vitamin C, ascorbic acid - The name gives it away, there is no chemical difference between "natural" and "synthetic" vitamin C; it's both plain ascorbic acid. What is missing if you get your vitamin C in pill instead of apple, citrus-fruit and other food-born forms are yet the active form of vitamin C, dehydroascorbic acid (DHAA), and its natural synergists which are required for vitamin C to work optimally...

Studies have shown that the "bioavailability of vitamin C in food and 'natural form' supplements is not significantly different from that of pure synthetic AA" which is true, when we look at ascorbic acid in isolation like Mangels et al. (Mangels. 1993) did... Mangels et al. did yet ignore the individual and synergistic effects of DHAA or other food constituents associated with natural vitamin C which may have positive effects other than raising serum ascorbate levels. Preliminary data from Vinson et al. (1988) however suggests that vitamin C complexed in food is absorbed 1.74 times more into red blood cells than isolated USP ascorbic acid...

A result that leaves no doubt that simple serum vitamin C measurements as they are done in most studies may be insufficient to identify the subtle advantages of natural vitamin C which does not come in pill form...
Douglas Q. Kitt, founder of ReCverin LLC, sellers of stabilized dehydroascorbic acid solutions.

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Re: Ascorbic Acid versus Natural Vitamin C and C-complex

Post Number:#21  Post by whitenoise » Mon Apr 24, 2023 6:41 am

I'm a big believer that ascorbic acid is Vitamin C, as I've read about on this website and in many books over the years.

However I came across this article the other day, and for the layman or those who haven't done much research it could seem pretty convincing.

The article mentions that actually the 'Real Vitamin C' is in fact a complex of ascorbic acid, 'P, J and K factors' along with Tyrosinase.

While there is mention that ascorbic acid alone does offer some 'limited' benefit, the article concludes:

My perspective on vitamin C vs. ascorbic acid can explain the highly uneven research results on vitamin C that pervade studies going back decades. Routinely such studies purportedly have tested vitamin C, whereas in reality they only used synthetic ascorbic acid.

For my money, I’d toss out all of it. The entire body of work is basically meaningless.

The simple solution is to consume whole, fresh fruits and veggies. The fresher the better.


I think its a bit misguided to group the entirety of the Vitamin C research done to date as 'meaningless', but as I mentioned you can easily see how someone could be lead to believe that ascorbic acid is not Vitamin C based on this article (if you didn't know otherwise).

Will we ever be free of the belief that Vitamin C is a complex and not ascorbic acid?


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