Recent Posts

ASCORBIC ACID (PURE VITAMIN C): AGING

Form the Book: Healing Factor Vitamin C Against Disease – by Irwin Stone, Linus Pauling, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi 1972.

Source on-line: https://vitamincfoundation.org/stone/

Source download book: https://welib.org/md5/35609ae8abf6e1dcb1cc701374943358

If the aging process is looked upon as a chronic, 100 percent fatal disease from which everyone suffers and which is present at birth and continues with increasing ferocity throughout life, we have a logical viewpoint to start our discussion. The first conclusion we can draw is that treatment of this chronic disease should not be directed against the acute symptoms developing in the later years but should be in prophylactic, preventative measures starting at birth and continuing throughout life.

Further, if we look at some statistics on the human life span, we find some startling facts. Modern medicine can take credit for the rise in life expectancy at birth of nearly twenty years from the 49.2 years in 1900 and much more from earlier days (it was 38.7 in 1840). This stems from the drop in infant mortality and reduction of morbidity of childhood diseases. But, as pointed out by Bjorksten (1), in 1965, the life expectancy for those at age sixty has been practically the same since 1789 (Figure 4.). Medicine has not done much to prolong the life span for those who survive the early hazardous years.

p114 fig-4.jpg

p114 fig-5.jpg

Bjorksten (1), in 1963, also compared the present mortality curves with a projected line which would be obtained if medical research were able to eliminate the progressive loss of resistance due to aging. The line was stopped at age 300 because there was no more room on the graph.

It was also recently noted by this author (2) that the current statistics on the human life span do not give a true picture of potential longevity because the "normal" population (which would be represented by lines A and B in Figure 5) used in the calculations of these statistics was suffering from uncorrected hypoascorbemia. Statistics based on a population of fully corrected individuals could be entirely different. The importance of the proper synthesis and maintenance of the vital protein, collagen, as a prime factor in inhibiting aging was also indicated. This synthesis and maintenance is wholly dependent on ascorbic acid.

The author believes that it is now practical to travel along line C of Figure 5 by the full "correction" of the genetic disease, hypoascorbemia, throughout life. The only tests needed are to see how far along line C we can travel. It is also his opinion that the proper use of ascorbic acid throughout life may provide the long-awaited breakthrough in geriatrics. Perhaps most importantly, ascorbic acid should also prolong the period of vigorous and healthy maturity, not merely prolong the life span.

The current theories relating to aging are backed by a substantial volume of published papers of which we can cit only few. The work of F. Verzar, W. Reichel, F.M. Sinex, D. Harman, I.G. Fels, and J. Bjorksten (1,3) indicates that senescence is due to profound changes in the elastic and other properties of the various environmental factors such as oxidation, free radicals, radiation, cross-linking, stress, and others, combined with time. Their research indicates that collagen is a very important factor in the aging process.

Here we are back again on the collagen-track with all the implications of the basic involvement of ascorbic acid in maintaining the collagen molecules in good repair and "young."

Many other reports of tests on the aging of the collagen macromolecule have confirmed the suspicion of its direct involvement in aging (4) (F.M. Sinex, 1957, A. Aslan and A. Vrabiesco, 1965; F. Verzar and H. Spichtin, 1966; C.D. Nordschow, 1966; R. Goodman, 1970, and many others). The extensive bibliographies given in these published reports indicate the vast amount of research expended in this field.

The use of antioxidants has been suggested many times to counteract the cross-linking and aggregative effects of oxidation and free radicals on the collagenmoleculrs. The 1968 paper by Tappel (5) reviews this subject and points out that the animal body, with its many oxygen-labile components, could not exist in this harsh oxidative environment without the presence of biological antioxidants that also serve as free-radical scavengers. Ascorbic acid is intimately involved in this biochemical scheme of natural fat-soluble and water-soluble antioxidants and he states, "Optimum amounts of vitamin C would be important in any attempts to slow the aging process."

Dr. Alex Comfort, speaking at the Eighth International Conference of Gerontology, also voiced the opinion that antioxidants may retard the aging process(6).

The comprehensive paper by Sokoloff and coworkers (7) at the Southern Bio-Research Institute showed, among other things, that blood-lipid abnormalities increased with advancing age and that ascorbic acid at 2 to 3 grams per day for twelve to thirty months improved this condition in 83 percent of their group of sixty cardiac patients. The 17 percent that showed no effect may have been helped had their hypoascorbemia been fully corrected by the use of more ascorbic acid daily. They also note the need for maintaining the ascorbic acid in the blood and tissues in the antioxidant form by the use of high daily intakes because the oxidized form, dehydroascorbic acid, has undesirable reactions.

There are so many references in the medical literature showing that ascorbic acid requirements are increased in old age and that the elderly suffer from serious depletion, that only a small sampling can be quoted here (8). Yavorsky, Almaden, and King, in 1934, showed that the ascorbic acid content of human tissues decreases with age. The ages varied from one day to seventy-seven years in five groups and the tissues examined included the adrenals, brain, pancreas, liver, spleen, kidney, lung, heart, and thymus. A substantial drop was shown in all cases. Rafsky and Newman, in 1941, examining twenty-five so-called normal individuals, aged sixty to eighty-three, found only two whose ascorbic acid retention behaved normally. Thewlis and Gale concluded, in 1947, that ascorbic acid deficiencies were common in older patients and that:

If there is any chance that a patient may have a cerebral hemorrhage or coronary occlusion, as indicated by high or fluctuating blood pressure, 500 to 1,000 milligrams of ascorbic acid should be given daily, parenterally, for several days.

In a follow-up study published in 1954 of 588 San Mateo County residents over fifty, one of the conclusions of Chope was that low ascorbic acid intake appeared to predispose the sample group to a high mortality. This was confirmed in the 1956 paper by Chope and Breslow. In a comprehensive study on the Nutritional Status of the Aging in California which correlated serum ascorbic acid and intake as reported in 1955 by Morgan and coworkers, good correlation was obtained, but the reported blood serum ascorbic acid values seem to high, indicating that some constant experimental shift to higher values operated during the test. This may be the result of the method they used for the determination of ascorbic acid in the blood serum which includes, besides ascorbic acid, the oxidation products of ascorbic acid itself. This well-planned study should be repeated using an analytical technique which would be utilized to differentiate the presence of reduced ascorbic acid from that of the oxidized form, dehydroascorbic acid, and other decomposition products. This same criticism on the choice of analytical methods applies to many other studies appearing after 1943, when these new analytical techniques were introduced (8).

other references (9), indicating higher ascorbic acid requirements in the elderly and lower levels found in the body, are Dawson and Bowers in 1961; and Bowers an dKubik, in 1965; Smolianskki, in 1965; Andrews and coworkers, in 1966; O'Sullivan and coworkers, in 1968; Mitra, in 1970; and many more references contained in the bibliographies of these papers.

One paper in this series which should be given special attention is that of Slotkin and Fletcher (10). This paper discussed the stresses of urologic surgery, especially prostatic surgery in patients in their 70s and 80s. Slotkin and Fletcher note that atypical bronchopneumonia is a common and often fatal complication of these operations. These postoperative complications are not truly pneumonic in character, but are the so-called wet chest and foul expectorations due to capillary secretions. They obtained good results, some spectacular, in spite of the pitifully small doses of ascorbic acid employed and concluded: "irrespective of the blood levels or deficiency of vitamin C, ascorbic acid is a valuable adjunct in tiding these aged patients over their critical postoperative period."

Smolyanskii (11) studied the effect of ascorbic acid on the production of important hormones from the adrenal glands of a group of 144 persons aged 60 to 90 years. He found that both the ascorbic acid blood levels and steroid hormone production were low. A single injection of only 500 milligrams of ascorbic acid increased the urinary excretion of these hormones, indicating a rise in their production by the adrenal gland. Continuing these injections produced further rises in hormone production. It is likely that if these elderly persons had been receiving adequate ascorbic acid over the years, their hormone production would have been maintained at desired youthful levels. The work of Patnaik (11) also indicates a connection between ascorbic acid and aging.

We now have a background of years of highly suggestive research. Yet the crucial tests to determine the actual effects of optimal intakes of ascorbic acid on slowing the aging process have never been started. The genetic rationale for these optimal daily intakes of ascorbic acid for the full correction of the human inborn error of carbohydrate metabolism, hypoacorbemia, is now available (2). The tests would involve simply taking normally healthy age groups and maintaining them for the rest of their lives on ascorbic acid intakes sufficient to fully correct this genetic liver-enzyme disease under conditions of little stress (about 3 to 5 grams of ascorbic acid per day). The health, well-being and mortality of this ascorbic acid group would then be compared with similar groups which are solely dependent upon their foodstuffs as their exogenous source of ascorbic acid. The results in a few years may be startling. Time is of the essence in having these tests started. This is the first time that we are in a position to correct this ancient human genetic disease. Let us make the most of it.