What we know for sure is that vitamin C is an important component of the diet of both healthy people and cancer patients!
Vitamin C effects on healthy and (cancer) patients
Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, was discovered by Albert Szent-Györgyi and Josef Tillmans in the early 20th century.
Since vitamin C is essential for the body's production of collagen, a lack of it causes subcutaneous and joint bleeding, bruising, including bleeding gums, inflammation, etc. (Interesting fact! The disease is much less common nowadays than in the 17th and 18th centuries, when sailors on long sea voyages contracted scurvy from a one-sided diet, mainly low in fruit and vegetables.)
It is important to note that it is not only low intakes of vitamin C that can cause problems, but also excessive intakes (ascorbic acid is converted in the body into oxalate ions, which can lead to kidney stones), i.e. the principle of 'not to overdo anything' applies here too.
The daily requirement of vitamin C for a healthy adult male is 90 mg, while for women it is 75 mg. This can of course be increased in certain life situations, e.g. smokers should always take more vitamin C.
If we want to meet our daily requirement of vitamin C from food, we can find the natural ascorbic acid that is important for our body in the following foods (in descending order from the food with the highest to the lowest amount of vitamin C): rosehips, parsley leaves, tomatoes, yellow peppers, green peppers, cabbage, peaches, lemons.
Ascorbic acid is a strong reducing agent, i.e. it has antioxidant activity, making it very popular in the prevention of so-called oxidative stress. Free radicals, which have harmful effects, are oxygen-containing molecules with aggressive properties. They have been implicated in the development of many diseases, including cancer. Vitamin C is intended to neutralise these free radicals.
The potential benefits of vitamin C in cancer patients were first suggested in the 1970s by Scottish-born surgeon Ewan Cameron, working with Nobel Prize-winning surgeon Linus Pauling.
Their collaboration led to a series of studies that began in the 1970s and 1980s.
Some of these studies confirmed that the general condition, quality of life and appetite of patients who received chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy with vitamin C treatment improved compared to patients who received chemotherapy alone.
However, the anti-tumour drug bortezomib, used in multiple myeloma, was less effective in animal studies when given in combination with vitamin C. The same study found that in human prostate cancer mice, the efficacy of the drug was not reduced when given with ascorbic acid. So the question remains open...
What we do know is that vitamin C is an important component of the diet of both healthy and cancer patients!
The role of vitamin C in the diet has also been studied with Avemar: how (and if) vitamin C influences the effectiveness of Avemar products.
The Avemar leaflet includes the following statement:
You can take vitamin C and/or vitamin C-containing preparation (also) when using Avemar. A break of at least 2 hours should be allowed between taking vitamin C and/or vitamin C-containing preparations and Avemar. It is advisable to use Avemar at a time other than when taking medicines or medicinal products.
If you have any further questions about diet or nutrition, please contact avemar@avemar.hu.
