Self Experiment

[KeyMeKoe]

I conducted an interesting self-experiment. Last Sunday morning I took a prilosec pill and that night took a tablespoonful of sodium ascorbate powder. I did not reach bowel tolerance. My stool was perfectly firm. Yesterday, Tuesday, I did not take prilosec but took a tablespoonful of vinegar and two teaspoonfuls of sodium ascorbate and hit bowel tolerance with no problem.

[ofonorow]

So, what are we to conclude? If you look at the table in http://www.orthomed.com/titrate.htm you will see that bowel tolerance increases the more stress the body is under. Are you saying that prilosec creates a stressful situation where the body can accept more vitamin C?

[Cis4me]

You might have to repeat the experiement several times just to rule out random variations in tolerance... It could be the drug is either "poisoning" you, raising your tolerance by some other means (could be either better absorbtion or somehow blocking fluid from collecting in the bowel due to the C not being absorbed) or some other factor.

[KeyMeKoe]

I had been assuming that the prilosec is interfering with the absorption of the sodium ascorbate. I do not believe that the prilosec increased my level of stress. However, the conclusion that my body was absorbing the vitamin c better because of the prilosec is also a reasonable conclusion. The best way to test that would be to check the vitamin c in my urine. Is there a way to do that?

[ofonorow]

Lowering stomach acid would in theory lower bioavailability of vitamin C - since acid is required to promote the quickest route to the blood stream - through the stomach lining (See the Hickey/Roberts book THE RIDICULOUS DIETARY ALLOWANCE.)

I have read Cheraskin books describing methods of measuring vitamin C in the urine, from an old memory, silver nitrate comes to mind, but I would have to review the book. In the meantime a gross measure are the vitamin C strips sold by Wholesale Nutrition.

[Cis4me]

I think the prevaling theory is that any oral ascorbate that is not absorbed in the blood stream travels to the large intestine where it causes all the symptoms of bowel tolerance (gas, dirrehea etc.) It would be very interesting to see where all this C is going.. i.e. is it breaking down in the gut, does it get absorbed etc.

Fred Klenner mentioned the silver nitrate urine test he developed in one of his papers so you could use that as a starting point. Please use caution with silver nitrate, it isn't something you want to ingest and if it gets on your skin it will turn that area black for weeks. The various reducing agents/antioxidants in your skin reduce the silver ions in the silver nitrate solution back to silver (the metallic form) just like ascorbate does and leaves a black stain (like old black & white photographs).

[KeyMeKoe]

I tried taking both prilosec and apple cider vinegar. The prilosec helps with the stomach ache symptoms and the apple cider vinegar helps with the vitamin c digestion. I hit bowel tolerance on 1/2 tablespoon powdered sodium ascorbate with that combination.