Vitamin C megadosage Vitamin C megadosage Vitamin C megadosage is a term describing the consumption or injection of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in doses well beyond the current Recommended Dietary Allowance of 90 mg/day, and often well beyond the Tolerable upper intake level of 2,000 mg/day. There is no scientific evidence that megadosage helps to cure or prevent cancer, the common cold, or a variety of other medical conditions. Historic advocates of vitamin C megadosage include Linus Pauling, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. Pauling argued that, due to a non-functional form of L-gulonolactone oxidase, an enzyme required to make
Vitamin C had proven this, but published the result without giving Szent-Györgyi credit for it. This led to a bitter dispute over priority. In 1933, Walter Norman Haworth chemically identified the vitamin as -hexuronic acid, proving this by synthesis in 1933. Haworth and Szent-Györgyi proposed that L-hexuronic acid be named a-scorbic acid, and chemically -ascorbic acid, in honor of its activity against scurvy. The term's etymology is from Latin, "a-" meaning away, or off from, while -scorbic is from Medieval Latin "scorbuticus" (pertaining to scurvy), cognate with Old Norse "skyrbjugr", French "scorbut", Dutch "scheurbuik" and Low German "scharbock". Partly for this discovery,