© Yuliya/
Vitamin C is an essential nutrient obtained from food and supplements. It is frequently the go-to supplement used for viral infections such as the common cold and flu. One downside with oral vitamin C supplementation is that only a small percentage is absorbed by the body and large doses can cause gastrointestinal upset making its efficacy hit or miss. Enter IV (intravenous) vitamin C. This master antioxidant can be absorbed at 100% when given IV. Vitamin C given by this route is not just effective for viral and bacterial illnesses but can also be used to treat a wide range of ailments not limited to Lyme Disease, multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, burns, wounds and various types of cancer -- yes, Cancer -- thought to have a poor prognosis.

Vitamin C has a long track record of being beneficial to one's health so why isn't it used in every hospital in the world? It's cheap and effective with few side effects but it is still seen as a 'fringe' treatment and its use is actively blocked by mainstream medical professionals.

Join us for this episode of The Health and Wellness Show where we'll discuss this miracle molecule and why it should become one of the main tools in your health arsenal. Also, stay tuned at the end of the show for Zoya's Pet Health Segment where the topic will be excessive licking or grooming in cats.

Running Time: 01:26:14

Download: MP3

Here's the transcript of the show:

Doug: Hello and welcome to the Health and Wellness Show on the SOTT Radio Network. Happy New Year everybody. This is our first show coming back after the New Year. Today is Friday, January 4, 2019. Welcome. Joining me in our virtual studio from all over the planet are Gaby, Erica, Elliot, and Tiffany.

All: Hellos.

Doug: So today we are going to be talking about the miracle cure you're not supposed to know about - intravenous vitamin C or IV vitamin C. Vitamin C is an essential nutrient obtained from food and supplements. It is frequently the go-to supplement for viral infections, and the common cold or flu. But one of the downsides with vitamin C supplementation is that only a small percentage is absorbed. When you're taking it orally you're only getting so much of it. There's a limiting factor there.

But enter intravenous vitamin C. This is a master antioxidant and can be absorbed at 100% when given intravenously. Vitamin C given by this route is not just effective for viral and bacterial illnesses but it can also be used to treat a wide range of ailments not limited to Lyme disease, multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, burns, wounds and various types of cancer. Yes, cancer!

Right off the bat I think we should say that this is a show for informational purposes. We're not diagnosing or recommending anything in particular. You should always do your own research. Talk with your health practitioner before venturing into anything. So how about that vitamin C guys?

Tiffany: Yay! I think the average person is not going to have private access to IV vitamin C. If they actually get it they're going to have to go through some formal channels.

Gaby: It all depends on what you mean by private. Is it home?

Tiffany: Just the average Joe sitting in his living room is not going to say, "Oh, I'm just going to start doing IV vitamin C on myself."

Doug: Well when people think of vitamin C they usually think of oranges. I think that's because of the orange juice industry that's always promoting their vitamin C content even though the vitamin C content of oranges is really nothing spectacular.

Tiffany: You have to eat how many oranges...

Doug: It's ridiculous.

Tiffany: get a decent dose of vitamin C?

Doug: Generally the daily requirements that they have in different countries, for vitamin C is so low. They say "Oh yeah, everybody should be getting 60 mg a day. That's basically enough to stave off scurvy but not much else. You're not really getting much benefit out of 60 mg of vitamin C.

Gaby: And then by the time you end up eating all those oranges you will have a sugar load.

Doug: Exactly! The other thing too is that vitamin C competes for uptake with sugar. I always laugh when you see those health drinks and stuff like that where it's called "vitamin C vitality" or something like that and you look on the ingredients list and it's loaded with high fructose corn syrup or glucose and all this other kind of stuff. Even if there's a lot of vitamin C in there, which is probably debatable, you're probably getting less than 10% of it because all the sugar is interfering with its uptake.

Elliot: It's also worth noting that vitamin C is extraordinarily susceptible to degradation. There's been research showing that after various fruits are picked, the vitamin C content is rapidly reduced. Just to add, one of the things which destroys vitamin C is light so you go to the supermarket and you look at all of the vegetables which have probably been sitting there for quite a while, then you factor in the time that it took to transport the vegetables from the country that they were grown in and then they've sat there on the shelves and there's light all around, so the chances are, many of the vegetables and fruits that we eat today really don't have half of the vitamin C in them they would have had if you'd picked them immediately. So there's also that to factor into consideration, especially with those drinks as well. Okay, how much processing has that drink gone through? All of the contents of the drink and then it sat on the shelf and it's got a shelf life of two years? Okay, that's probably questionable.

Erica: What about those fizzy Emergen-C drinks? Do you guys ever do those? The little packets?

Doug: People love those things.

Erica: Those contain 1000 mg of vitamin C but they also have maltodextrin, citric acid, natural flavours, aspartic acid, tartartic acid. So I don't know if that's the best thing to take either.

Doug: I think if you're actually concerned about your vitamin C intake probably the best thing you can do is just supplement with it. I know food sources are better in most situations but honestly, not if you're trying to do therapeutic doses of things. Say you've got a cold or something like that. Eating a few oranges really isn't going to cut it. So I think that generally this is a situation where if you're sick or you're feeling you need vitamin C for some reason, supplementing is probably a better way to go.

Gaby: I have here some numbers that might give some perspective on what we're talking about. For example, it says that under normal circumstances or a best case scenario, people have around 0.7 to 1.4 mg per decilitre of vitamin C in their blood. Then if you supplement with vitamin C orally, you might get to 1.3 or 1.4 from 18 grams per day but if you have 25 grams intravenously you can reach 300 mg per decilitre.

Elliot: Wow!

Gaby: That's like a 300-fold increase.

Elliot: There's inbuilt mechanisms when it's orally dosed. One of the problems typically with people who try to get a high dose vitamin C when they're taking it orally is that it induces diarrhoea. There's a couple of theorized mechanisms for how that works. One of them is that it's rapidly metabolized by gut bacteria and this activates evacuation by the gut. As you said Gaby, the level of vitamin C in the blood is really quite tightly regulated so it's very difficult to achieve higher levels when you're taking it orally. So that's something that is important.

Gaby: That's right. So they are talking about an intestinal regulation? A kidney regulation? But it is interesting that in the natural world, like animals, most of them are able to make their own vitamin C. It's just us humans, primates and I think guinea pigs...

Doug: Yeah, guinea pigs.

Gaby: ...have lost that ability.

Doug: Well one way that people try to increase the amount of vitamin C that's absorbed is to take liposomal vitamin C. The liposomal stuff is kind of like the vitamin C molecule gets surrounded by a liposome which is a fatty casing. I guess what it's doing is bypassing the body's mechanism for limiting how much vitamin C is absorbed and because it's in a fatty casing it's actually absorbed more easily as well. So then you're actually able to uptake that a little bit better.

Gaby: They're claiming it's nanotechnology, liposomes, the fatty coating around the vitamin C makes it so that you absorb it more easily into your cells and they did one study with these nano-liposomes and they were saying that if you take 6 grams of our stuff, that's like having 20 grams of vitamin C injected directly into your vein. So apparently that was very good news because the practicality of getting an IV is not that easy. But other people who are not directly involved in that industry were saying, okay liposomal vitamin C is great compared to ascorbic acid but the absorption method is different. It's not for sure that the liposomes will go directly to your cells and even then they might float around until they're finally absorbed. Apparently the liposomes get disassembled in the liver and so the beneficial effects of liposomal vitamin C could be additive instead of unique.

Some people actually recommend that you supplement with ascorbic acid until you reach bowel tolerance, a few grams before you reach that barrier, and then when you reach that point you can take the liposomal vitamin C and then you can keep going with an additive effect. It will build up in your bloodstream without having that diarrhoea effect.

Elliot: But if I understand correctly Gaby, the effects of intravenous vitamin C are somewhat different to the effects of supplemental vitamin C. Is that correct? So essentially if you take oral vitamin C or vitamin C in food or even liposomal vitamin C, it's typically known as an antioxidant so it's involved in all kinds of different reactions. It's involved in the conversion of dopamine into norepinephrine. It's involved in collagen synthesis. It's involved in carnitine synthesis and these things are really important. But the use of vitamin C intravenously, due to the rapid rate at which it's absorbed, actually has a pro-oxidant effect which is more difficult to attain via other methods.

Gaby: That's right. Actually there are some research papers where they have done studies and they actually have seen that maybe 15 to 25 grams IV could act as an antioxidant but after 25 grams it is a powerful oxidant. But the good thing is the oxidant effect is especially harmful for bad cells, so to speak, for cancer cells because cancer cells don't have this protective antioxidant system in terms of specific enzymes that protect it against these oxidants' effect from vitamin C. Basically intravenous vitamin C mega doses is actually then creating these oxidant effects through hydrogen peroxide in tissues or the extracellular space and this is a killer effect for cancer cells. But normal cells, since they have enzymes or anti-acids so-to-speak, that buffer or protect them from the hydrogen peroxide, nothing happens to them. So it sounds like a very, very safe, chemotherapeutic agent, vitamin C as an IV.

Elliot: Yeah, I found that absolutely fascinating because I was reading one of the papers because you mentioned how vitamin C rapidly increases hydrogen peroxide and the way that cells usually get rid of hydrogen peroxide is through the enzyme catalase. But what's interesting, as I was reading this paper, it was talking about how cancer cells don't express catalase or express enough of it to be able to neutralize this oxidant effect. Your healthy cells do and that's what protects them. But it's just fascinating that it renders the cancer cells particularly susceptible to this effect.

Gaby: It is fascinating from a biochemical perspective and it is also fascinating because it explains a lot of the experiences that people are having or the result that some researchers or doctors have received from giving mega doses of vitamin C to cancer patients, like cases of tumours receding in size progressively through the months until they disappear when they were sent home to die because they were not candidates anymore for surgery or radio therapy or chemotherapy. That's something.

Doug: The guy who did the most work on vitamin C was Linus Pauling. He had a partner named Ewen Cameron and getting prepared for the show we read one paper he had written back in 1982 I think it was, where he was talking about their work on vitamin C and all the resistance that they had come across from their research. All they were doing was researching and looking at this amazing thing that they were finding was working so well on cancer and they were getting so much resistance from the mainstream medical people.

Tiffany: Establishment.

Doug: Yeah, exactly. He was actually quite shocked at how much there was. You'd think that if somebody said "Hey, I just found a cure for cancer!" people would be like "YAY!!" But everybody was "No! No you didn't! That's pseudo-science! That's not real. That's terrible." But the reason I brought him up is that in this paper that he wrote I just wanted to read where he is talking about one case in particular. So quoting here he says,

This concerns a 40-year-old man with widely disseminated reticulum cell sarcoma confirmed by lymph node biopsy. Arrangements were in hand for him to be treated by conventional methods of radiation and chemotherapy but due to a purely administrative mistake and not as a result of a deliberate clinical decision, this could not commence for two weeks. As a purely holding operation he was started on intravenous vitamin C and within two weeks all traces of his disease, hepatomegaly spalenomegali...

Gaby: Liver enlargement.

Doug:...gross disseminated lymphadenopathy, mediasteno enlargement...

Anyway, sorry, I should have practiced before I read this. {laughter}

...had completely disappeared. He was released home without conventional treatment and on oral ascorbate. As the months went by his continued well-being raised understandable doubts about the correctness of the original diagnosis despite the histological proof and his ascorbate was gradually reduced. After one month without any supplemental ascorbate his disease returned in all its original manifestations. He was given a further period of intravenous ascorbate, again with complete resolution of his illness. This man remains well more than 10 years later, still on supplemental ascorbate. Spontaneous remission of cancer has been reported on quite a number of occasions but this is the only case on record who has gotten better twice. I may add that the original slides have now been examined by quite a number of both British and American pathologists and all agree with the correctness of the original diagnosis.

Gaby: Amazing! Amazing!

Doug: It's unbelievable!

Tiffany: Yet the medical establishment will still say that there is not enough research on this topic. I think there was one video that we watched in preparation for the show, the guy was from New Zealand I think and he was in hospital and the board of medical directors or the people in the ICU met a few times and they refused to give him IV vitamin C despite his family insisting that they try it because they said he was going to die anyway, they were going to take him off of life support so what was there to lose. So his family kept insisting. The board kept saying "no, no, no" and then finally they gave in and gave him some vitamin C.

Gaby: They hired lawyers.

Tiffany: Yeah, he had this white-out lung condition so his lungs were just full of fluid. So they barely even showed up on the x-rays. I think it was after he got the first dose of vitamin C they did another x-ray and they could see his lungs more clearly and the hospital still didn't take that as proof that the IV vitamin C was working.

Gaby: The thing is, he had a triple whammy of bad luck because he had leukaemia which is cancer of the blood. Then he got the swine flu and then he was dying from pulmonary distress syndrome, very bad prognosis. He was basically in a coma and that's why everybody was 200% convinced he was just going to die. So I think the family hired some lawyers to actually get the vitamin C going so that's why they accepted and he received the standard protocol. I think they built up to a dose of 1 gram per kilo or 100 grams vitamin C IV and that's when he finally got better. Literally the next day his x-ray started normalizing and the doctors would still not believe that it was due to the vitamin C. I don't know what they believed.

Tiffany: They said that it's because they turned him onto his chest in the bed. They laid him prone and that was...{laughter}

Doug: Yeah, that's what turned him over. Miracle cure. Turn the guy over.

Gaby: They were humble! Come on! {laughter} Because they had that attitude, they actually lowered the dose all the way to two grams from 100 to 2 grams and he was still getting better but much slower. That's when the family decided "Okay, so we're going to give him six grams of liposomal vitamin C orally because he was already conscious by then and that's when he got better.

Tiffany: And the hospital still didn't want to admit that was the reason. There's not enough research.

Gaby: I guess we should be thankful they were allowed to air a documentary about it and that it's still available on YouTube.

Doug: The thing is, after that aired apparently all these other people who had swine flu or any of the other conditions this guy had, started demanding from their doctors that they get vitamin C and they had to go into overdrive saying, "No, no, no, there's no proof that that's what made him well. It would be irresponsible for us to do that." Give me a break! All this kind of stuff, coming up with all these excuses. They did a follow-up show to it, I think it was 60 Minutes Australia that did it, where there was one guy whose father actually ended up dying because they would not do the vitamin C. They refused. They even gave a statement saying "We will never give vitamin C." What kind of statement, how scientific is that?!? What if the studies actually come out? You're still never going to give vitamin C even if it's proven?!

Tiffany: At the very least trust your eyes and say "Okay, as a hospital we're going to start doing some trials of vitamin C. At the very least they could have done that but they're just, "No, we'll never do it."

Gaby: He could ask himself "What are the chances of somebody in a coma recovering from leukaemia, swine flu and pulmonary distress? Search somebody, in the literature. Come on!

Doug: Complete recovery.

Erica: One of the articles we read called The Clinical Impact of Vitamin C - My Personal Experience as a Physician - and I'll put the link up the chat - the doctor just put in ascorbic acid into PubMed and found 24,000 articles. {laughter} What he said was "What began to emerge as I proceeded to review these thousands of articles was that vitamin C is more important than any other treatment for infection or exposure to toxins." Twenty-four thousand! You just missed all those?!

Tiffany: There's no research Erica!

Doug: There's no research.

Gaby: I think over the last year over 800 articles have been published about it. To recognize these little efforts, o is true that in a bunch of countries around the world you can get this therapy done privately, in a private clinic. For example in, if you go to this website and then resources you will find the list of practitioners that do IV vitamin C by country. Almost every country is covered in that list. So we have at least that.

Erica: They were the one that published that article Gaby.

Gaby: Oh yeah?

Erica: Orthomolecular News Service, yes.

Gaby: In the past, in medical history I think especially around the 1950s it was used a lot for all kinds of conditions and they were getting miraculous effects for things like viral encephalitis, polio myelitis, septic shock, also cancer, but they were more concerned with infections because they had less resources back then and they would have excellent results by giving mega doses of vitamin C within 2-4 days. They would start with 100 grams or 1 gram per kilo and then the second dose would be slightly lower or maintained and the person would just respond.

Doug: It's ironic that it is accepted, people are allowed to do vitamin C IV for beauty stuff {laughter} because it's good for collagen and stuff like that and so people can go to some spa or something like that and get a vitamin C infusion. Mind you the doses aren't high enough to affect cancer, but they can do it because they want their skin to be better because it helps with collagen and all that stuff. So "I want a youthful treatment to make me look nice and beautiful". "Oh yeah, let's do this IV vitamin C." But then, "I'm dying of cancer. Can I do IV vitamin C too?" "No! No you can't. I'm sorry. If you just wanted your skin to be better then we could do it but since you want to cure your cancer with it, no that's not allowed!" {laughter}

Gaby: Isn't that crazy?! And the same thing applies I think for near infrared lights. If it's for beauty reasons, yeah. If you just go to an aesthetics salon where you'll get it. For medical reasons, "Ah, I don't know. Never heard of that. What are you talking about?!" {laughter}

Elliot: It's the same for mesotherapy as well which refers to a percutaneous injection of something into the skin. Most of that, that I can see, is purely cosmetic when actually if you look at the work of Rene Quinton and all of the stuff that came after that, there's such therapeutic potential, but then when you move into the realm of medical treatment this stuff is seen as really woo-woo and a bit crazy and no one wants to really go there. It's absolutely astonishing.

Doug: Yeah. People are okay with the Botox injections. "Make my lips look fat like I just got punched in the mouth." No problem {laughter} "Cure my skin condition." "Nope!"

Tiffany: So is this yet another case of the medical lobby being so strong that they will not accept any alternative treatment that proves to be beneficial because of their bottom line?

Gaby: Definitely yes.

Erica: I would say that's what all the articles suggest.

Gaby: In perspective, Linus Pauling who won a couple of Nobel Prizes, when he published his initial results with mega doses of vitamin C in IV in cancer patients, the medical establishment responded to that by trying to confirm his results but what they did - and this was the Mayo Clinic - instead of trying it IV, they did it orally, which we already reviewed, is not the same thing at all.

Doug: And yet to this day people cite that as evidence that it doesn't work, that Pauling and Cameron's research has been debunked because of this Mayo Clinic follow up, which is complete BS.

Gaby: And vitamin C in IV is pretty safe but maybe we can review a little bit how some people do it and what are the potential side-effects just so people know that okay, if I'm in a dire situation and choose to go to a private clinic and maybe get this done, what can I expect? For example in the old days they were using mega doses of vitamin C and the mishaps that happened were extremely, extremely rare. There's no comparison. You can be more worried about the side effects of chemo or radio therapy or even taking Ibuprofen or paracetamol. Vitamin C in IV mega doses is relatively safe.

There was a case of somebody who died, yes, that is correct. But what they discovered is that this person had a genetic defect. He had a deficiency in one of the critical enzymes in red blood cells called G6PD which stands for glucose 6 phosphate dehydrogenase. This enzyme acts like an anti-acid in red blood cells and it's like a natural antacid and if you don't have this enzyme or not enough of it, if you get mega doses of vitamin C you will have no buffer to counteract the hydrogen peroxide, all the oxidant effects from vitamin C. It will happen the same as with cancer cells that don't have these enzymes. They'll just die. So that happened.

Since then it is pretty much a standard protocol to always do this test before getting mega doses of vitamin C in IV. People who have this genetic mutation are usually people from African descent and Mediterranean descent because it is a mutation that arose due to exposure to malaria but nevertheless it is systematically done to all people. So that is the main thing.

Then there is a protocol that starts with a relatively low dose, like 15 grams and it builds up until it reaches one gram per kilo or 100 grams depending on the condition or the cancer and just to see if there are side effects and if people tolerate the dose. Usually what happens with mega doses of vitamin C in IV is that the person gets dehydrated. It's like not having enough water in your system so some practitioners actually add a bag of water in the IV before or they actually encourage the person to drink a lot of water with electrolytes or salts beforehand or during.

Also the other potential side effect is low blood sugar levels. A person can even faint from low blood sugar levels. This happens especially in people who are not on a ketogenic diet, that is they are used to having a carbohydrate metabolism. So these people are also encouraged to eat while they're having the infusion and that will significantly decrease these side effects. Other people who are keto-adapted, that is their metabolism is based on fat metabolism, are usually able to sustain good blood sugar levels without having any lows.

So overall, it's relatively safe and they have already done the mainstream research about it, phase I clinical trials so to speak, to see how safe mega doses of vitamin C in IV is in conjunction with chemo therapy or without it and the results are in. It is so extremely safe, don't worry as long as you're doing this therapy with a practitioner who knows about it. I think they have studied over 9,000 patients doing this protocol, mega doses of vitamin C IV with or without chemotherapy and they saw effects in less than 1.5%. Pretty safe and the side effects were pretty manageable.

Actually even the bad side effects that were reported in the literature in the very early phase when people were not following a specific protocol was because vitamin C worked too well. What happened in one case is that a patient with metastatic cancer, cancer spread all over his body, he received mega doses of vitamin C and what happened is all the cancer cells died suddenly, abruptly which is called in medical terms necrosis and the patient was not able to deal with so much dead tissue in his body and something bad happened because of that. That is why with the protocols nowadays they always start with the lowest possible dose and they are individualized, depending on the type of cancer, the person, the age and so on. Nowadays it is very rare to have side effects.

Doug: I find it really interesting too that the IV vitamin C in conjunction with chemo therapy and radiation actually makes those things work better because I think some people will do the vitamin C but still do the chemo and the radiation, whether because their doctor is insisting or because they want to cover both bases, but apparently the chemo and radiation is much more effective if it's done in conjunction with vitamin C as well which is pretty fascinating.

Gaby: Yeah, it makes it less toxic. There was a recent podcast in the last couple of years with Dominique D'agostino who is the keto expert. He's done research studying keto applications in cancer in conjunction with oxygen therapies like the hyperbaric chamber. He was talking with a medical doctor. The interviewer was a medical doctor actually and he was asked "If it was your wife or somebody you really loved who had cancer, what would you do?" The research points to wanting to have a killer therapy in cancer. You don't want to do things like glutathione in IV because they act as anti-oxidants. You really truly want to kill the cancer and don't want to give it help that will enhance its mutations favourably so it will be more deadly. He was saying that he would definitely do mega doses of vitamin C IV for its killer capacity and because it is so safe, and then some oxygen therapies that he has researched and other chemical compounds that actually arrests the metabolism of the cancer cells.

So that was pretty interesting. He was thinking also, as you say, that there are some patients who are so divided or they're just so vulnerable that they don't know and they might think, "Okay chemo/radio therapy is the way to go" that benefit more when it is done in conjunction with mega doses of vitamin C IV.

Doug: I'm assuming he'd also would do the keto diet as well.

Gaby: Yeah. He will give exogenous ketones, like cheating ketones which enhances the ketogenic state other than being on the keto diet. That's a different story I guess, but yeah.

Elliot: In the context of supporting or reducing the negative effects of the chemo or the radio therapy, we were talking about intravenous supply vitamin C can have this pro-oxidant effect but that doesn't necessarily mean that all of it will be pro-oxidant and as part of chemo therapy and radio therapy, there's so much damage from unnecessary oxidation to healthy tissue. When there's oxidation to healthy tissue you really want to repair that as best you can and you do need anti-oxidants for that. Like you said Gaby, with the idea of giving intravenous glutathione, it's potentially problematic because the cancer cell can actually use that.

Gaby: Yes.

Elliot: So there's so many nuances around this. But it seems like really, one of the perfect therapies - if I had cancer I would totally go for this because it has that pro-oxidant effect, completely killer activity on the cancer cell but also that antioxidant activity protecting all of the surrounding tissues and potentially regenerating the endogenous antioxidants which are used to repair the damaged tissue if someone's gone through chemo or radio therapy.

So really, in both bases I don't know of anything else that's been studied that can do that. I guess there's really not much of a question as to why it's been dismissed by the mainstream medical community, probably because it's so effective and big pharma cannot have this getting out because quite frankly, if you look at the statistics, if I'm correct then radio therapy and chemo therapy make up one of the most profitable aspects or products that are produced by big pharma.

Gaby: Yeah.

Elliot: So it kind of makes sense.

Gaby: And immunotherapy, which is extremely expensive, all the research that is being financed nowadays, yeah, they would be very upset if vitamin C comes along and ruins the party, kind of thing.

Doug: Exactly.

Gaby: But it is a good point. I wanted to also mention, because a lot of alternative practitioners are very focused on the antioxidant approach and we've got to remember or keep in mind that some cancer cell lines are extremely cunning and manipulatively intelligent. They behave like monsters. They will take everything in their favour. So even things like nutrients or antioxidants that you think will help the body, they will take advantage of that and that is why the research points to a killer approach being more effective and even chemo radio therapy is the ultimate killer approach but it ends up killing all the good cells as well and the patient often. So vitamin C in IV mega doses, even though you might think it's the most impractical thing in a dire situation it is something to keep in mind, especially nowadays in the last few years, it is becoming more available and accessible even though you have to go to a private practice or private clinic.

Elliot: I just want to add to what you just said Gaby about cancer cells being highly manipulative because although there's loads of information on the benefits of a ketogenic diet, particularly for the brain cancers, it seems that even some types of cancer can use ketones as well.

Gaby: Yes. That's a good reminder.

Elliot: Many people think that they can just go on a ketogenic diet and reverse or improve their cancer and unfortunately there's lots of people dropping dead because a ketogenic diet isn't always as effective as it is purported to be. If you've got one of these particular kind of cells or cancers which can use fatty acids which can take ketones and use them and manipulate them in protein synthesis and all this kind of weird and wonderful stuff, which some of them can do it seems, okay, ketogenic diet but in conjunction with the vitamin C. That seems to be a safe option rather than just trying to do it dietarily.

Gaby: Yeah, that's a very good reminder because the ketogenic diet became very popular as a cancer treatment but there is research that shows that the cancer says, "Oh, so you're just going to give me ketone bodies? I might switch to just using ketone bodies!" It's an extremely good point. If that's the case it's literally a multi-approach but highlighting the killer approach and the best option that we have at hand right now is vitamin C.

Doug: Do any of the cancer cells utilize ketones better than they utilize glucose? I'm just wondering if you should do the ketogenic diet just as a failsafe. You may as well do it because even if it doesn't benefit it's at least not going to do any harm.

Gaby: I might still do it. You know why? Because at least it stabilizes blood sugar levels and that helps to have less side effects from the mega dose vitamin C but apparently there are some cancer cell lines that will respond better to ketone bodies but even the classical approach of the proverbial malignant brain tumour that apparently the ketone diet is excellent for, there is actually research which shows that they can switch to using ketone bodies.

Elliot: It seems like a good failsafe at least but it just doesn't seem to be the answer for everyone. There are some miraculous cases. Look at Andrew Scarborough in the UK who is practically in remission or he's been managing his cancer for five years or so using a very deep ketogenic diet but unfortunately it just doesn't seem to be effective as a sole measure, as the only thing, which is unfortunate.

There was one other thing that I wanted to add about vitamin C. I don't want to derail the conversation too much but one of the researchers who studied it was talking about when you measure vitamin C in cancer patients typically it's always very low and if you look at many of the symptoms of the cancer patient they develop something called cachexia. There's fatigue and lethargy, all of this kind of stuff and it's characterized by muscle wasting. He's talking about vitamin C's essential role in carnitine synthesis.

So carnitine is one of the amino acids. It's something that we get in the highest amounts from red meat but it can actually be synthesized and you need vitamin C to synthesize it. Carnitine's main role is to take fats and transport them into the mitochondria to be burned to energy. He was saying that aside from all of the pro-oxidant effects like the hydrogen peroxide in the killing of the cancer cell and even the antioxidant abilities of the vitamin C, he was saying that one of the other reasons why such high doses might actually be really beneficial is because what it may be doing is rapidly increasing the synthesis of carnitine and it's helping people to maintain muscle mass, to maintain energy levels, to maintain ATP synthesis in the rest of the body to burn fat properly and contributing toward the overall positive outcome that you see in vitamin C treatment. I thought that was really interesting because I didn't know that. I wasn't aware that it was involved in carnitine synthesis. I just thought that was interesting, how some people when they start it, they feel like they've got more energy and things and it could kind of help to explain that.

Gaby: And maybe if we clarify for our listeners what else vitamin C is involved in, we can have more clues about why it is good. We said at the beginning but vitamin C is also involved in the creation of neurotransmitters, like epinephrine for example and collagen. Collagen is basically the skeleton or most of your tissues, your blood vessels. They did this in the past, early 20th century, like a tourniquet test, putting a lot of pressure on your arm and if you have a lot of capillary frailty or if your blood vessels were really weak, you will get a lot of bruising easily and that was a sure sign that you were severely lacking in vitamin C.

Elliot: It's also needed in the adrenal glands as well so it's needed to synthesize various of the adrenal steroids and it's proposed that when someone's under chronic stress that it increases your need for vitamin C because of this, because you're basically funnelling out loads of adrenal stress hormones and that is depleting the adrenal glands of vitamin C.

Now there's a condition called adrenal fatigue. There are a couple of theories about what it is. If you ran a stress test on some of these people you'd find that they would typically have very low levels of cortisol and that was theorized to be because the adrenal glands were depleted and they were treating it with vitamin C and I don't know if they got good results or not. I'm not sure about that. I think there's a couple of theories now that it's kind of a brain-based thing but that is one of the functions of vitamin C and it would make sense that if you're one of these people who is under chronic stress, then you would probably need more of that to maintain the burden.

Gaby: They were theorizing also that because vitamin C helps to create epinephrine that people who have adrenal fatigue sometimes have low cortisol levels after they've exhausted creating so much cortisol. That helps to balance that. It doesn't stress the cortisol system too much if there's more effective epinephrine going around. I remember the founder of GreenMedInfo, Sayer Ji, was saying that "Guys, remember vitamin C is the most effective thing against adrenal fatigue" instead of expensive supplements where most people compound similar adrenal...

Doug: Yeah. Adrenal extracts.

Gaby: But it also speaks of how it has been so effective in chronic fatigue syndrome which is in the spectrum of an auto immune disease and mainstream medicine never effectively deals with it. Patients with this disease are treated like "You're basically crazy. That doesn't exist. How come you sometimes have energy and sometimes you don't?" Vitamin C is helpful for that as well.

Elliot: What's interesting about that as well is in chronic fatigue there's a strong correlation between chronic fatigue and underlying bacterial or viral infections. Epstein Barr virus is one of those. I was reading one of the papers about intravenous vitamin C and I'm not sure if it applies to oral vitamin C as well but maybe it does. I'm not sure. It was talking about the effect that vitamin C has on the viral coating and how it can stop viral replication in its tracks and therefore that's why it's being used in viral infections as well as cancers and things. So as has been said before, it's not just effective for cancer. It seems to be effective for all sorts. The article that you wrote Gaby on your website, it's very extensive - polio, Epstein Barr, all kinds of different things. It seems a miracle.

Gaby: But it's a good point because back in the day they had excellent results with severe infections, the kind of thing that our little guy from New Zealand would die from if he would not have received vitamin C, respiratory distress syndromes and swine flu or the flu, mumps, rubella, hepatitis.

Tiffany: Chicken pox.

Gaby: Name everything.

Erica: Lyme disease too.

Gaby: Lyme, yeah. Tularaemia, even things where food was not prepared properly.

Erica: Mononucleosis.

Gaby: Exactly! Mononucleosis is a big one. To their credit or to our reassurance, you can start with vitamin C orally and work up to bowel tolerance and then when it gets a little bit more desperate that's when you keep in mind parenteral use of vitamin C. I say parenteral because they use it intramuscularly as well which is more accessible. The thing with vitamin C is that it's too hypertonic. It burns. So that is taken into account when it is given in IV. They buffer it. They make it so it will not be so acidic and they put it in solutions that will not make it burn as much, for example Ringer's lactate is the famous one.

Other countries have other equivalents or just plain sterile water for injection. Back then in the day when they were really desperate and they had unconscious children or they couldn't find veins they would use even two grams at a time intramuscularly. Yes, it will hurt a lot. Keep the ice pack ready and put it immediately until the skin turns red, wait a minute and do it again. But it will work. The person will turn around and he will recover from his infection or his disease. Usually this was an infection. I'm thinking about, the cases that they described like severe varicella or mumps or that type of infection.

Erica: What about things like MRSA or antibiotic-resistant super bugs?

Gaby: Yes, they have studies about that apparently and this is something I always do when I have to prescribe an antibiotic. I always give some vitamin C while it's available in my country, the system and it helps to prevent resistance or has the double whammy antimicrobial effect, so to speak. For example pseudomonas which is an infection that has a particular smell and the bacteria is green. Diabetic people get it a lot. Sorry that I have to be so descriptive. {laughter} Multi-resistant pseudomonas is a big problem and this is the type of infection that you have to treat with intravenous antibiotics. So by giving vitamin C, the treatment is more effective and the chance of eliminating the bacteria is better because these guys create biofilms like castles and it can live in the body indefinitely until the person is stressed and then boom! Infection.

Tiffany: So there's really no excuse not to be using IV vitamin C in hospitals since it does so well against viral and bacterial illnesses, especially bacterial illnesses where we're having this rise of antibiotic resistance and people have been on so many antibiotics that they just don't work for them anymore. So IV vitamin C would be perfect for that. But still we don't use it.

Gaby: Yeah, some hospitals - we have to give all the support, voice all our support to them. In intensive care units they're using it more and more, the vitamin C, maybe in more countries than others. I know for example back in 2002 or 2003 when I arrived in Italy vitamin C was systematically used in the intensive care unit, not in mega doses but it still helped. Now they are saying it could have a big difference in septic shock if you give mega doses of vitamin C. So let's not lose hope but let's not hold our breath either. {laughter}

Doug: Especially when in the US the FDA recently has made the availability of IV vitamin C much less, essentially. They've put a ban on the mass production of IV vitamin C. That was one thing they did. Another thing they did was lower the availability of intravenous products, the bags and stuff like that. This all happened after that 60 Minutes story came out. All of a sudden people couldn't get these bags anymore and they banned the production of IV vitamin C. Now mind you I've seen YouTube videos where people are making it in their kitchen for IV. I don't know if I'd recommend that but it is possible.

Gaby: In most countries there are vials that you can get with a prescription in the pharmacy but they contain only one gram per vial, usually five millilitres.

Erica: But you have to have a doctor write a prescription for that, right?

Gaby: Yes and no. Maybe some countries no. It is a vial that is specifically for intravenous or intramuscular use. But I've heard stories of patients telling me that "I thought it was our prescription". Because it's vitamin C people think that they will just drink it or I don't know.

Tiffany: In the US I think you actually have to have a prescription. I actually looked yesterday on a certain website that sells medical products. There was I think a 50 gram ascorbic acid vial for injection or IV. It was 200-some dollars.

Erica: For one vial.

Tiffany: For one.

Gaby: That's over-priced because in most pharmaceutical companies that do these vials, they have either 25 or 30 grams up to 50 grams, usually it's around $50 per vial, 45€ or $60. That's the standard price more or less.

Tiffany: Well they have some for veterinary use. I don't know if this is for IV or if it's for injection but they're much cheaper and they're sold on Amazon.

Doug: Huh! No kidding.

Tiffany: Yeah.

Erica: I know what I'm using my gift card for! {laughter}

Gaby: It is true there is an effort on the part of practitioners that do this in private practice to find a pharmaceutical company or even to create one that will sell vitamin C at a lower cost because it should not be that expensive. In the old days the way they did this was to sterilize a half-litre bottle with a funnel and a rubber stopper and then a spoon. They will fill the bottle with sodium ascorbate fine crystals, the line of the bottle up to 300 cc's, around 250 grams of sodium ascorbate crystals. Then they added around 6.6 millilitres of epitate dissolute to alkalinize the whole thing a bit further and then they added just sterile water until they filled the bottle to 500 cc's. The thing is, with mega doses of vitamin C, if you have a high enough concentration - we can put an arbitrary line on 30 maybe - mega doses of vitamin C have anti-microbial properties. It sterilizes the solution.

Doug: Right.

Gaby: So that's why even though back in the day they were not crazy careful with their sterilizing conditions, they actually used the thing to treat infections. They just sterilized the solution, the dosing so that's why. So yes, it is not so difficult to do it but yes because they now have all products for parenteral use meaning IV use, there is very strict control and that's in a sense good so they can guarantee the sterility so that nothing filters in. You just have a pure product. There are so many nuances to this vitamin C so yeah, the best thing is just to get a practitioner who is familiarized with the protocols and can individualize the dose for you and do the IV and stuff.

But still I think even people who are in an emergency and this is not accessible, there is also enemas to consider. It's something that the orthomolecular organization recommends for giving children who have bad veins or who are unconscious, that type of emergency. They say that you can make an enema with sodium ascorbate, 15-30 grams and up to 2500 millilitres and that could work as well.

Tiffany: I still think in that case it's not as absorbable as IV but it can still work in some cases.

Gaby: Yeah. I published in my blog a summary from all the information available. It's called Vitamin C's Historical and Miraculous Record. If you go to and you search for vitamin C you'll find that post. If you read that article, the historical record - I know it's a lot of reading but it's fascinating reading - how they use it when they're so desperate. If you're in a desperate situation, yeah, try this while you think about a diagnosis. You can think later about what the person had but don't let the patient die. Just do it. And these physicians were advocating ambulances having vitamin C available as the first thing that a technician or a physician working in an ambulance should do. Get it going. So that's helpful. But it's part of the historical record and I wonder if it will ever come back at this level or no. We've pretty much lost this wisdom.

Tiffany: Maybe not, but I think that if more EMTs and emergency room staff and ICU staff start using IV vitamin C as one of their first lines of defence, maybe it will spread out more into the regular floors in the hospital. Maybe.

Elliot: It's interesting because talking about the ER, the ER department of the hospital is emergency medicine which are making use of this kind of stuff. It's the case with vitamin C. It's also the case with other things as well. It's interesting how that pans out because in emergency rooms they will use intravenous thiamine as well and intravenous thiamine is absolutely fantastic for so many other health conditions, things like Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, dementia, all of these other chronic health issues which you would not associate with thiamine, they can be treated with intravenous thiamine. It's just interesting that they use it in the emergency rooms. They also use vitamin C in the emergency rooms. They probably use other things in the emergency rooms as well.

Tiffany: Like sodium bicarbonate they use a lot.

Elliot: Sodium bicarb. And do they use DMSO as well?

Tiffany: I've never heard of them using that.

Elliot: No?

Doug: Magnesium they'll use though. If somebody's having a heart attack they'll give injectable magnesium. They don't use that anywhere else in the hospital.

Elliot: Yeah, so it's like they'll use these things in an emergency but maybe these people needed it before the emergency occurred! {laughter} Maybe because it works it's because their body actually needed it two years ago, before they got to the point where they have the acute heart failure or whatever. Hopefully it catches on.

Tiffany: I don't think we need to hold our breath on that though. This is the real world we're living in.

Elliot: So you've got to take initiative.

Doug: Yeah. As we always say on this show, people just need to do their research. I think if somebody is suffering from something where IV vitamin C would be something that would be helpful, then they need to try and source it out, see if they can find it and get to work because the medical establishment isn't going to save you.

Tiffany: Yeah. Once you get in there it's hard to get out. I think the best approach - as with all things - is to take preventative measures where you actually don't get to the point where you have these emergency situations, like modifying your diet, certain lifestyle factors so that you can enact these changes so you don't actually get to the point where you're in this emergency and you it's "Oh my god, I need vitamin C!" Some things can't be prevented but there's a lot of things that can be just with diet and lifestyle.

Doug: Absolutely. We have a few chatters asking about liposomal. At the end of the show, listen to the beginning because we already covered it. {laughter}

Gaby: Maybe we can review it briefly as follows: generally the people recommend if you're feeling like you're getting the flu, a sore throat and stuff, you do ascorbic acid orally, vitamin C orally. You don't want to reach bowel tolerance. You don't want to have diarrhoea. So you do that orally right before you reach bowel tolerance and then to increase the effectiveness you can add some liposomal vitamin C because they act differently. They get absorbed differently. So the effect is additive. Then the desperate situation is when that didn't do it then yeah...

Erica: Get your IV.

Gaby: Does somebody do IV around here in this town or country? So that's one way to do it but usually the plain ascorbic acid works better because it doesn't buffer the stomach acid. Your stomach is very important to protect you against infections and to digest food. So you don't want to give sodium ascorbate, which is the alkaline version. It is not as effective as ascorbic acid but if you don't tolerate ascorbic acid properly then yeah, your options are sodium ascorbate and liposomal vitamin C.

Erica: I have a quick question Gaby. Would it be counter-productive to do liposomal weekly or just to maintain a good immune system? It's okay to do that?

Gaby: That's a very good question because these guys from orthomolecular - they have a lot of research. Just go to their website. You'll see all the published data that they have. That's where the science is. They actually recommend liposomal vitamin C for more chronic stuff or if you want to increase the levels of vitamin C in your bloodstream in conjunction with IV vitamin C or normal oral vitamin C like in cancer or chronic infections. But if you have an acute problem, liposomal vitamin C is not as effective. It's not as predictable. You could literally have the little patch thingy floating around and not where it's needed. You have effective absorption where it's needed, highly oxidant effect, that's where IV should be considered. But for chronic stuff or say for example in a cancer protocol, they usually recommend liposomal vitamin C and that's why the guy from New Zealand recovered after he had a mega dose, life-saving event. He came out of his coma and he finished his therapy with liposomal vitamin C. It just adds the concentration of vitamin C through your bloodstream. It adds to that bloodstream concentration.

Tiffany: And for relatively healthy people who don't really have any issues, it's still okay to take a daily supplement of vitamin C.

Gaby: Yeah, it is okay and actually you can save money. If you're buying the stuff, if you want to guarantee the nanotechnology liposomes, if you're buying it you'll find that it is a little bit less than 40€ for 30 grams, regardless of the pharmaceutical company. So if you want to save money you can do ascorbic acid orally and that's relatively cheap and then finish up with some liposomal vitamin C. Or maybe we can share our homemade version recipe which is not as effective but why not? It could do. I don't know. You guys have the recipe around?

Doug: I don't carry it with me usually.

Gaby: It is the one that we researched and posted in the forum. It's just that some people increased the quantities to adjust it for big families or big batches. So the one I have is as follows: 3 level tablespoons of lecithin and don't get extremely picky about your lecithin because it's highly processed and even GMO stuff disappears. Maybe that's not politically correct. {laughter} Then GMO-free lecithin from soy or sunflower, sunflower if you're super-careful but keep in mind it's highly processed, its' highly purified. That will be three level tablespoons of lecithin and one level tablespoon of sodium ascorbate. You can create that by combining ascorbic acid and sodium bicarbonate. You dissolve the lecithin in one cup of warm water. That will be 240 cc's for the international guys, preferably distilled of course. Let it soak for a while, a couple of hours will do. It doesn't have to clump so maybe warm water is better. Then you dissolve the sodium ascorbate in half a cup of warm water, also distilled, and then you pour both solutions in an ultrasonic cleaner and mix it there in the ultrasonic cleaner for 20 to 25 minutes.

Erica: That's a jewellery cleaner for those of you who need to use your Amazon gift card you can buy it on there for about $25. {laughter}

Gaby: So that's...

Doug: The recipe. Home version. It should be stated that the home version likely is not getting as many of the vitamin C molecules into the liposomes but nonetheless you're getting some. So it's going to have better delivery than just your standard vitamin C in general. The stuff that you get commercially, they're not using ultrasonic jewellery cleaners probably. {laughter} Those ones more than likely have a much higher ratio of the number of particles that actually end up in the liposomes.

Gaby: And pharmaceutical companies or specialized labs are using nanotechnology.

Doug: Okay.

Gaby: To make the liposomes. The ultrasonic cleaner, even if it's one-fourth effective, it's still good.

Doug: Yeah, exactly.

Erica: But it's really inexpensive to make. You can make it for $20, $30.

Doug: It's true.

Gaby: Plus the lecithin is good to.

Doug: Just a warning, because if it's completely in the liposomes you're not going to reach bowel tolerance on it. But I know that people doing the homemade stuff will reach bowel tolerance which is an indication that there is still some vitamin C that's not with the liposomes. So just be careful with it and titrate your dose to make sure you're not going to get bad bathroom experiences out of it.

So does anybody have anything else to add about vitamin C?

Tiffany: One of our chatters asks if it's okay to do IV vitamin C just for a tune-up. I would definitely say yes. You might want to try it just to see what it's like.

Doug: Yeah.

Gaby: The easiest way to get it in your country is to go to a beauty/longevity centre.

Doug: Exactly. Just say "I want perfect skin" and they'll go "Here, we'll give you some IV vitamin C." {laughter} Maybe we should go to Zoya's pet health segment.

Tiffany: It's on excessive grooming in cats.

Zoya: Hello and welcome to the pet health segment of the Health and Wellness Show. We all know that cats like to groom themselves. If we have a feline pet we may see them sitting in various positions and licking themselves for quite a while. Basically grooming is a natural behaviour for cats. Cats may spend up to 25% of their waking hours grooming but there is such a thing as too much grooming. Grooming becomes excessive when it takes precedence over other activities or no longer seems functional. What's more, all this licking can lead to hair loss, skin wounds and ulcerations. So listen to the following recording by Dr. Karen Becker to learn more about this compulsive behaviour, why cats do it and how to help them. Have a great weekend and good-bye.

Dr. Karen Becker: Hi, I'm Dr. Karen Becker and some pets take their natural tendency to groom themselves to the next level, turning it into a compulsion. Kitties who excessively lick and groom themselves have a condition known as psychogenic alopecia which is one of the most common feline compulsive disorders. Excessive grooming often begins with what we call a displacement behaviour. Cats do best when a daily routine that is predictable and consistent is a part of their lives and as a response to a change or a stressor in their environment, some kitties will perform a specific behaviour like repetitive grooming over and over.

This displacement behaviour helps to reduce the emotional tension that the cat is feeling because licking actually can release very soothing endorphins. If the anxiety-producing situation continues, the cat may continue the displacement behaviour repetitively until it becomes compulsive or habitual. The type of stress that triggers excessive licking tends to be ongoing and is usually a combination of stressors that are cumulative. For example, a new family member, a move to a new house or even a relocation of the litter box around the house can upset the average kitty and trigger displacement behaviours.

Female cats tend to be more prone to psychogenic alopecia than male cats. The disorder can happen at any age but is commonly seen around the time of puberty. There could be a genetic basis for this disorder because it's seen primarily in certain purebred cats, primarily oriental breeds that tend to have anxious temperaments. The disorder can also occur with kitties who are hospitalized or who have been boarded, deprived of freedom, which means caged for a long period of time. Bored cats commonly exhibit this behaviour or kitties that are generally stressed or have anxious dispositions. It's important to differentiate psychogenic alopecia from other reasons kitties lick specific areas of their bodies such as pain or an irritation on the skin.

There are actually many medical conditions that can cause cats to over-groom. If the problem is generalized itching, the licking will be widespread. They'll itch all over them everywhere and if there tends to be a painful area, the cats will focus their licking where there's pain. For example, if the anal glands are impacted then that will cause the cat just to lick around the perineal area. When a cat focuses her licking it can give you clues as to what the underlying issue could be which could be any number of things including fleas, a neurologic or chiropractic issue, parasites, food intolerances or a reaction to dust, pollen or mould.

Conditions that aren't skin-related but that can also cause excessive grooming include cystitis which is inflammation of the bladder and hyperthyroidism. And actually I've seen really intense facial itching as a secondary reaction to thyroid drugs in many kitties. Other reasons cats can acquire non-specific dermatitis are somewhat less obvious including food hypersensitivities or a reaction to actually one ingredient in the food including a vitamin, a preservative or a dye that's in the food.

Kitties can be very sensitive to environmental toxins including VOCs, phthalates and airborne toxins released from room sprays or plug-ins as well as scented candles or household cleaning supplies. Reducing a pet's environmental chemical load is a really important first step in identifying possible household causes for irritated skin. Offering filtered, purified water from a glass or stainless steel bowl is also very important, so eliminating plastic from your kitty's life is a good idea.

Identifying and correcting underlying environmental and medical issues is a really important step before you should assume that your cat is looking for an emotional reason. If a kitty licks to the point of breaking the skin then obviously skin infection can occur and the presence of infection will intensify the licking which can result in even more of a vicious cycle of licking and being irritated and then licking and then being really irritated.

Cats spend up to 40% of their day actually grooming themselves and much of their remaining time is then spent sleeping. So it's very common for pet owners to be oblivious to the fact that there's significant hair loss or bald spots or even scabs from over-grooming. It's also possible that cat parents don't notice the behaviour because when they're home with the cat she feels more comfortable and she's relaxed so she's not doing the self-soothing behaviour.

Obvious signs of psychogenic alopecia are excess licking and chewing. More aggressive kitties can resort to biting themselves and pulling out clumps of hair or fur. There may be shafts of hair that are chewed down to stubble and there also can be wounds or lacerations so if you have a scabby kitty and you don't know why you should be thinking about this. Hair loss and skin damage will be localized to the area where your cat can reach to lick and chew so on the top of the head that's not what's going on. Often it's the abdomen, the flanks, the back, chest and also the inner thighs. There may also be a line of stubble down the back or on the front of their legs that looks a little bit like razor burn and that can be a clue that your kitty could be over-grooming.

In addition to excessive licking there can be other signs of stress including hiding or refusing to eat, nervousness, not using the litter box. These are all clues that the behaviour could have an emotional rather than a physical root. However I've seen a lot of kitties with psychogenic alopecia and the only symptom manifested is this compulsive grooming so the kitties just appear to be very calm. They don't seem stressed but they just over-groom constantly.

When all medical issues have been ruled out or resolved and you've narrowed the problem down to an issue of compulsive behavioural thing, treatment should be focused on stress reduction and environmental enrichment. Cats like to eat at the same time every day so making feeding time very consistent is a good thing. Keep food bowls and litter boxes in a consistent location and of course exceptionally clean. Provide your kitty with lots of great hiding boxes and access to high perches as well as appropriate scratching surfaces.

Most cats really enjoy interacting with you so make sure that you're taking time every day to be present emotionally and being the emotional support that your kitty needs. So interact with your cat and be really present. You also want to make sure that you keep your cat physically active on a daily basis with an interactive toy or a laser pointer or a wand toy. So get them physically moving. I think many of these cats actually are incredibly bored so providing many options for mental stimulation throughout the day is really important.

Patios or safe time spent outside can also be super life-changing for these cats because they get to see and smell their natural environment. Opening the curtains or blinds before you leave for work can also provide something that your kitty can watch throughout the day if they're going to be home alone for hours without anyone checking on them. Brushing your cat's coat is also beneficial for removing loose hair and cutting down on hairballs and many kitties really enjoy being brushed. Invest in a treat or food-dispensing toy for your cat. You can also think about window perches and kitty videos to actually provide environmental enrichment when you're not there.

Also talk to your integrative veterinarian about stress remedies for anxious cats. I've had great success treating these kitties with flower essences, homeopathics and acupuncture. Consider stress-reducing sprays around the house as well such as the feline facial pheromone spray called Feliway. CBD oil can be very beneficial for stressed cats. Aspen silvervine is the alternative to catnip. It's a calming, natural herb you can provide as well as valerian root.

Most importantly, you need to be patient. You need to never punish your kitty for over-grooming as this will only make the situation much worse. Remember excessive grooming problems usually take time to resolve, no different than any other addiction being broken. So think of your kitty as having a bad addiction and you want to work with your cat but with consistent attention, affection and a really good routine, most kitties do actually get over the psychogenic alopecia issue. They will regrow their hair and their quality of life will improve within a few months time if you address it consistently and as quickly as you notice the problem.

Doug: Okay, that is our show for today. Hope you all enjoyed. Thanks to our listeners and our chatters and be sure to tune in to the other two SOTT Radio Network shows. Tomorrow is the Truth Perspective and on Sunday is NewsReal so thanks for joining us and have a great week.

All: Byes.