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 infection. The mega-dosing theory is to a large degree discredited. Modest benefits are demonstrated for the common cold. Benefits are not superior when supplement intakes of more than 1,000 mg/day are compared to intakes between 200 and 1,000 mg/day, and so not limited to the mega-dose range. The theory that large amounts of intravenous ascorbic acid can be used to treat late-stage cancer is - some forty years after Pauling's seminal paper - still considered unproven and still in need of high quality research. However, a lack of conclusive evidence has not stopped individual physicians from prescribing intravenous ascorbic acid