Linus Pauling: Nobel Prize Scientist

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It seems likely that sometime in the past — perhaps 20 or 25 million years ago — the common ancestor of man and the other primates lived in an environment where the available food contained large amounts of vitamin C. It also seems likely to me that these conditions favored the appearance and subsequent reproduction of a mutant animal that had lost the cellular machinery required to make ascorbic acid in the body. The mutant, you see, would have a selective advantage. . . it would not be encumbered by the "excess genetic baggage" represented by the genes responsible for ascorbic acid synthesis.

At any rate, I think that the human race was descended from such a mutant, and that — over the years — the human race has expanded its territorial range into areas where the food supply is deficient in ascorbic acid. So that now, we're all getting less vitamin C than we should be ... than our ancestors did.

PLOWBOY: Contrary to what the medical establishment says, then, a mere 45 thousandths of a gram of vitamin C per day is not enough to keep an adult in "ordinary good health". Is that what you would say?

PAULING: That's correct. What the physicians and nutritionists call "ordinary good health", I would call "ordinary poor health" in this case (laughter).

PLOWBOY: In your opinion, how much vitamin C should people be taking to maintain a state of optimum good health?

PAULING: It varies from person to person. There is evidence that some people remain in very good health-that is, remain free of colds, the flu, and so on-through the ingestion of only 250 milligrams of vitamin C per day. Other people require larger amounts ... up to five grams daily, or more.

PLOWBOY: How much vitamin C do you take every day?

PAULING: I take ten grams a day, myself.

PLOWBOY: Ten grams! That sounds like an awful lot. Doesn't the body just excrete excess vitamin C anyway?

PAULING: According to some of the authorities it does, but according to observation it doesn't. If you take more than 150 or 200 milligrams of the vitamin per day, then some fraction of what you ingest is excreted in the urine within a few hours ... but it isn't 100% of the excess. In fact, if you take a large amount of vitamin C, only 62% of the ascorbic acid that gets into the bloodstream winds up in the urine ... the other 38% remains in the body. The idea that supplementary vitamin C simply gets washed away in the urine is a misapprehension ... one that's made quite often by nutritional "authorities".

PLOWBOY: Some vitamins — vitamin D, for example — are toxic if taken in large doses. Is this not true of ascorbic acid?

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