“Vitamin C is found universally in the plant and animal kingdoms. Plants readily produce vitamin C from the simple sugar glucose. Virtually all vertebrates and invertebrates produce vitamin C internally from glucose. Smaller animals characteristically manufacture it in the kidney, while larger animals manufacture it in the liver. One of the oddities is that a handful of animals do not manufacture their own vitamin C.  Among them is the Anthropoidea suborder of primates, which includes us, the guinea pig, the fruit eating bat of India and a songbird called the red-vented bulbul. We, the members of the Homo Sapiens species, lack the fourth and last liver enzyme, 1-gulonolactone oxidase, which is necessary to convert glucose to vitamin C.”

” In the mid-1960’s, Dr. Irwin Stone, a California biochemist, hypothesized that the ancestors of the human race lost the ability to manufacture vitamin C about sixty million years ago, but that the need for and ability to use the vitamin was retained.  Dr. Stone contended that there was a freak accident that selected against those who had the burdensome biochemical machinery to produce vitamin C and selected for those who could obtain vitamin C from food.”

” Dr. Stone reported in his book, The Healing Factor: Vitamin C Against Disease, and numerous published papers, that the animals that produce their own vitamin C do so in amounts relatively consistent with body weight. The production of vitamin C increases relatively consistently with stress- and quite rapidly if the stress is severe.”

“As an illustration of this mechanism, and how it relates to people, Stone explains that a 150-pound goat produces 13,000 milligrams(13 grams) of vitamin C daily when unstressed.  This unstressed rate of vitamin C production converts to about 86 milligrams per pound of body weight each day. Exposure to stress will double or triple the rate of glucose-to-vitamin C conversion.”

“Contrast this with the official determination of what human needs are.  The Recommended Daily Allowance(RDA), promulgated by the  National Academy of Sciences and the Food and Drug Administration, is 45 milligrams of vitamin C for an adult (not per pound of body weight) to prevent scurvy. Converted to the amount needed per pound, the figure would be about one-third of a milligram.  This is far from the 86 milligrams per pound the goat produces, and it is far from the 20 milligram per pound amount recommended for laboratory monkeys, the closest of our biological relatives.”

” Because of the genetic accident preventing us from producing our own vitamin C, Stone feels, we are all deficient in this vitamin from birth. Many other scientists see scurvy, which the RDA is supposed to protect us from, as not the first sign of vitamin C deficiency but the last before death.”

“Just as glucose seems a universal biological fuel, so vitamin C appears to be necessary to maintain homeostasis, a state of equilibrium.  Stresses necessitate aheightened production of vitamin C, because it is essential for the production of other biochemicals required for normal and stressed metabolism.  It doesn’t matter whether the stress is physical, such as an infection or cold weather exposure; psychological, as with anxiety or pressure at home and the office; or attack- the so-called ‘fight or flight’ syndrome in the animal world. The body shifts into a defensive posture to meet and minimize the effects of stress. Vitamin C is necessary for the body to accomplish this successfully.”

This is an excerpt from Vitamin C Updated by Jack Joseph Challem.