ICU and Home Critical Care (Part Two)

We are continuing to explore a revolutionary change in intensive care medical treatment, whether done by doctors in ICU and emergency rooms or self-administered at home. It is an embarrassing simple protocol of natural agents that out muscle pharmaceutical alternatives in terms of safety, effectiveness and low cost. Many of these agents are already quietly in use by the best doctors. (See Introduction)

The strongest and most controversial proponent of vitamin C administration was Linus Pauling, Ph.D. (1901–1994), the winner of two Nobel prizes: chemistry and peace. It is known from in-vitro studies, that ascorbic acid binds to the α-adrenergic receptor, enhancing its activation by epinephrine. May et al. summarized the beneficial role for vitamin C in endothelial growth, survival, and ability to maintain vascular responsiveness and integrity,[1] something that no pharmaceutical can claim. Research suggests that vitamin C arrests progression to multi-system organ failure (MSOF).

Dr. James Enstrom from the University of California studied the vitamin intake of over 11,000 people for 10years. He found that 300mg of vitamin C a day reduced risk of heart disease by 50 percent in men and 40 percent in women. Doctor G. C. Willis found that people taking 1,500mg of vitamin C a day for 12 months reversed plaque while those who didn’t take vitamin C had worsening plaque. It is clear that vitamin C is necessary for vascular health.

Low levels of vitamin C in the blood are linked to a more
severe form of peripheral artery disease, an often painful
condition in which the leg blood vessels become blocked.
Circulation Journal of the American Heart Association

Even when there is not a single outward symptom of trouble, a person may be in a state of vitamin C deficiency. Optometrist, Dr. Sydney Bush’s retinal artery observations has documented reversal of atherosclerotic plaque with Vitamin C supplementation. Retinal photograph taken in 2002 (below) reveals artery disease (vessel narrowing, drop out of some vessels). Retinal photos on the right confirm that pericorneal arteries have widened and some reappear after daily vitamin C supplementation.

The pericorneal arterioles and capillaries can be divided into ten degrees of scurvy allowing the accurate prediction of how much or how little vitamin C is present in the body.

Vitamin C administration shortened the length of stay in the intensive care unit on average by 8% in 12 trials with 1766 patients according to a meta-analysis published in Nutrients according to the University of Helsinki. Vitamin C is a safe, cost-effective way to reduce the time that patients spend in intensive care.

“Through its epigenetic effects, vitamin C may influence hundreds of genes. In controlled trials, vitamin C has lowered blood pressure, decreased the incidence of atrial fibrillation, decreased bronchoconstriction, decreased pain, decreased glucose levels in patients with type 2 diabetes, and it has shortened the duration of colds.”

“Very low vitamin C plasma levels are not uncommon in hospitals. Furthermore, vitamin C metabolism is changed in many conditions that involve physiological stress, such as infections, surgery, traumas, and burns, in which case vitamin C levels can decline dramatically. Although 0.1 grams per day of vitamin C can maintain a normal plasma level in healthy persons, much higher doses, up to 4 grams per day, are needed for critically ill patients to increase their plasma vitamin C levels to the range of normal healthy people. Therefore, high vitamin C doses may be needed to compensate for the increased metabolism in critically ill patients.”

A research team at the University of California, Berkeley found evidence that vitamin C does significantly reduce levels of oxidative stress, which is associated with a variety of chronic diseases. Vitamin C also seems to ameliorate oxidative damage by decreasing LPO (lipid peroxidation levels) and altering antioxidant defense systems in the liver.

Vitamin C is an important independent antioxidant with a key role in protecting cells from oxidative challenge and cell death from oxidative stress. When used in combination with other antioxidants such a protocol will address the most serious threats of sepsis as well as other life-threatening diseases.

IV vitamin C is a wonderful treatment when people are on the edge between life and death for it has the power to bring people back from the brink. High dose vitamin C is especially useful any time a patient is under great stress, feeling excessive fatigue, when their immune system needs bolstering to fight acute or chronic viral and bacterial infections, when skin needs to be restored to glowing conditions such as after sun damage or surgery and to help improve the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy like fatigue, nausea and vomiting.

Deprived of vitamin C, your body falls apart at the very root. In extreme cases you end up with a condition called scurvy that involves bleeding, hair and tooth loss, joint pain and swelling, and eventually death. Fortunately, even small amounts of vitamin C from foods like oranges and lemons prevents this condition. Unfortunately, food and oral supplements aren’t enough to stabilize the conditions of most patients in ICU departments whose needs for vitamin C are much greater than normal. Vitamin C is essential to life itself. We can’t live without it, and our bodies can’t make any of it so doctors should take notice and administer both vitamins C and D for all patients in ICU.

Many doctors ask does intravenous vitamin C work? Skeptics tend to demean everything that is not in their selfish interests. The real answer to this question is in the above paragraph. Vitamin C, in the end can be a vital as oxygen or any other essential agent. Critically ill patients cannot afford to have the vitamin C levels drop to dangerous levels. This is a certainty and there is no doubt that intravenous C will address this issue in ICU and emergency departments where lemons and oranges just will not do.

At very high dosages administered intravenously vitamin C is also known to be able to treat and bring cancer into remission even with late-stage cancer patients. It does this by creating hydrogen peroxide—which goes on to kill cancer cells directly. “Findings give plausibility to IV ascorbic acid in cancer treatment, and have unexpected implications for treatment of infections where hydrogen peroxide may be beneficial,” wrote researchers in 2005. National Institutes of Health scientists confirmed the concept that vitamin C is selectively toxic to cancer cells and that tumor-toxic levels of vitamin C can be attained using intravenous administration.

Even though IV C is being used in burn units around the world, including in the U.S., and has been adopted by the military for this purpose, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) refuses to fund any studies using intravenous C in patients.

Clinical trials using IVC to treat cancer have, to date, demonstrated its safety without conclusively proven its efficacy. However, again looking at the above information late stage cancer patients are under extraordinary stress, especially if they are suffering through chemo and radiation therapies so there is no doubt that IVC would be of help.

“The result of one study found that continuous IVC infusions improved several parameters associated with poor cancer prognosis. The data suggests a strategic benefit to using lower IVC doses in continuous infusions: raising the dose above 300 mg/kg/day (20 grams in 70 kg human) increased the frequency of side effects without noticeably increasing plasma ascorbate levels. Moreover, improvements in lymphocyte counts at low IVC doses tended to decrease at the higher doses. In conclusion, continuous infusions had benefits to cancer patients.”

Treatment with vitamin C (100 μM) increased the 5hmC content in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells and markedly altered the transcriptome. The vitamin C treatment induced apoptosis in MDA-MB-231 cells, which was verified in two additional breast cancer cell lines. This pro-apoptotic effect of vitamin C appeared to be mediated by TRAIL, a known apoptosis inducer.[2]

Our immune system requires vitamin C. The more stress we are under (infection or exposure to cold, emotional problems, etc. all produce stress to our systems) the more vitamin C we need to remain healthy. Without minimum levels of vitamin C our cells are more easily overwhelmed by the stress and distress of life’s challenging events.

A rational approach for medical oncologists use of IV C as a safe supportive intervention to decrease inflammation in the patient and to improve symptoms related to antioxidant deficiency, disease processes, and side effects of standard cancer treatments all make sense. Many doctors and medical scientists seem to think vitamin C has given many cancer patients the opportunity to improve their quality of life (Riordan, Riordan, & Casciari, 2000; Jackson, Riordan, Hunninghake, & Riordan, 1995; Padayatty, et al., 2006; Duconge et al., 2007; Riordan, Jackson, & Schultz, 1990).

Special Note: Not everyone is going to apply vitamin C intravenously but still they might want to take high dosages orally. Ultimate Protector™ delivers a lot of antioxidant firepower into the nucleus of the cells having over 30 activators across a very broad spectrum of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. The product includes a broad range of bioflavonoids and plant polyphenols that work together with vitamin C to defend the body against all five major classes of free radicals in the body. This formula provides over 30 fruit- and vegetable-based antioxidants and Nrf2 activators to offer full spectrum protection in complete synergy with high-quality vitamin C.

Six capsules of Ultimate Protector contain 2.81 grams of the formula, the overall daily ORAC value is 486,000 units (173,000 x 2.81). When vitamin C is used orally at high dosages with selenium and hydrogen inhalation many of the same results of IVC should be realized.

It is important to note that oranges today have approximately half the vitamin C content that they had 70 years ago. We need more vitamin C today but get less.