Commentary by Theo Farmer
(OMNS
July 28, 2020) How do you inspire your children to take the right amount of
vitamin C several times a day?
By
learning this simple truth early in life and adopting the correct "ascorbate
practice," children are given the best chance to develop to their full
potential and to live a life that is free of disease.
What
a powerful gift to give to your child! But how do you make it easy for a child
to embrace a daily ascorbate practice for the rest of their life? And, how many
children who understand the power of vitamin C does it take to change the
world?
More important now than ever
The
power of achieving the right vitamin C level in your body daily is old news.
It's like 50-plus years old, but it's not "news." What is
"news" at the moment is the COVID "crisis." But it is an
overblown crisis to people who understand the human need for vitamin C and who
take mega doses daily. Orthomolecular practitioners can "C
through it." They have a proven understanding about vitamin C: their own
bodies are proof. It is an understanding that makes them immune to fear of
viruses.
"Instead
of the warning: KEEP THIS MEDICINE OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN! carried
by cold medicines, I think that they should say
“KEEP
THIS MEDICINE OUT OF REACH OF EVERYBODY! USE ASCORBIC ACID
INSTEAD."
That
was a double-Nobel-laureate writing 50 years ago.
Pauling
had the confidence that he could change the world. His second Nobel Prize was
the Nobel Peace prize. He earned it for his role in changing the world for the
better. He and his wife were instrumental in bringing about a ban on all
above-ground nuclear weapon testing. Yet the science he compiled in his 1970
book - which could change the medical world - is far from common
knowledge 50 years later. Indeed, if you ask any person on the street if they
know who Linus Pauling was, very few do. So what happened?
Better to start early
Starting
when I was maybe 2 or 3 years of age, my parents frequently read a book to
teach me that eating green eggs and ham might seem like a bad idea, but that
sometimes it's worth it to try things that challenge our preconceived notions.
It was a complex concept, way more complicated than what I needed to know about
vitamin C, but that lesson was drilled into me through a children's book, and
that lesson has served me well. The Dr. Seuss character named "Sam I
Am" taught all of us this valuable lesson with the words, "You do not
like them, so you say. Try them, try them and you may. Try them, and you may, I
say."
I
still know that simple, life-shaping rhyme. Applying it to foods is one thing.
Applying it to established thoughts and beliefs is another, and may be key to
solving many problems in life. But, how could I have learned such a complex
concept in the 1960s and yet, as a child, I did not learn the very simple truth
about my need for megadose vitamin C to maintain optimal health? Also, how was
it that I earned a University bachelor's degree in science with honors in 1983,
and yet I never learned that virtually all mammals, primates excepted, make
megadoses of vitamin C internally all day.
My own story
My
story can be viewed as a worse-case scenario with respect to those two
questions. You see, I was raised in Oregon, the birthplace of Linus Pauling, I
was educated at Oregon State University, where all of Linus Pauling's research
is sequestered and the Linus Pauling Institute resides. So the simple question
of why I knew nothing about the power of megadose vitamin C in the 1980s leads
me down some very dark alleyways.
My
first son, born in 1984, developed a brain tumor at age 7. My second son, born
in 1986, was fully disabled with "cerebral palsy." Those decades were
a blur of gut-twisting confusion and awakening about our world. Without
understanding vitamin C, I was learning many dark truths about the cancer
industry, government, pharmaceutical industry, insurance industry, agricultural
industry, and food industry.
The
world that Linus Pauling had attempted to change in 1970 turned out to be a
very dark world for me to raise my family in, and not understanding vitamin C
aggravated my situation. Where Pauling had succeeded in halting above-ground
nuclear testing, he had ultimately failed at teaching even the most educated
humans, en masse, about their daily need for frequent doses of vitamin C. So
here we are, 50 years later, with a false crisis called COVID now dominating
everyone's life.
Around
2003 or 2004, links on the internet helped me to stumble onto papers by Dr.
Robert Cathcart and Dr. Frederick Klenner and other vitamin C pioneers on the
website doctoryourself.com. I started studying vitamin C,
experimenting on myself and, with her permission, my wife and her horse. I
learned about my bowel tolerance for ascorbic acid and all the amazing benefits
for me, my wife, and her horse. The dramatic results experienced by me and my
wife (and later our vitamin-C-baby grandchildren) comprised a brilliant and
rude awakening.
Tribal thinking
I
developed extreme enthusiasm for these "newfound truths," only to
face another rude awakening: What was simple, life-changing truth for me came
up against a powerful dynamic that I now understand to be "tribal thinking"
in the other people I talked to. A few adults and young people could be
convinced, but the end result of tribal thinking is that most adults invariably
resist the truth about vitamin C.
Humans,
it turns out, in spite of Dr. Seuss's green-eggs lesson to question our
preconceptions, are mostly tribal thinkers once they become adults. Few adults
are willing to discard established patterns of thinking and living. Our adult
bodies and minds are addiction machines, wired to repeat old patterns daily.
The tribal thinkers, the majority of humans, feel threatened when you bring
them truth that can shatter their worldview, and their brains literally shut
out your message. I imagine that every orthomolecular practitioner
has experienced the fallout of tribal thinking at some level when they have
attempted to tell adult friends, family, and acquaintances about megadose
vitamin C. The adult mind, solidified in tribal thinking and tribal practices,
is not generally receptive to the information. The truth about vitamin C is too
simple and, if true, it would shatter their worldview, so it is screened out
consciously or subconsciously. It's simply not allowed. Powerful profit-driven
forces stand against it.
Understanding high-dose C
If
you take a slightly different look at Dr. Cathcart's brilliant clinical
research described in his 1981 paper "titration to bowel tolerance," you
can find two very clear, but unwritten conclusions:
1.
The laxative industry is
not needed (only megadose vitamin C is).
2.
If you don't take enough
vitamin C when you're sick, nothing happens.
The
first conclusion can elucidate the motivation behind the profit forces. The
over-the-counter laxative industry in the US alone exceeds US$1 billion in
revenue each year. The gross immensity (no pun intended) of that number
(not including the rest of the world and prescription laxatives) speaks to the
titanic profit-driven forces that vitamin C threatens. However, potential loss
of revenue by the poop industry is only a tangential point.
The
second conclusion is simple and more important to the profit forces: Vitamin C
is easy to marginalize: simply convince people to take less on any particular
day than the amount that is effective.
Cathcart's
work shows us that by taking enough vitamin C we can
alleviate symptoms of disease and optimize health. At the same time, he shows
us that if we don't take enough, nothing dramatic happens. The reason for this
is that our bodies use vitamin C at different rates depending on the level of
stress experienced. When the level of vitamin C in the body goes down, our
bodies get inflammation throughout, and we are susceptible to infections. For
ordinary days with only minor stress, adults may need only 2,000 - 6,000 mg per
day taken in divided doses. Kids will need less, totaling ~1,000 mg per day per
year of age, also taken in divided doses. But when we are stressed, for
example, recovering from surgery, or when infected with a virus, we may need
10-times that amount -- 1,000 mg per hour or more.
Attacks on vitamin C
If
you want to be in the profit-motive club, then you tell people falsehoods such
as "ascorbate is only a vitamin," "take more than 500 mg of
vitamin C, and you just pee it out; expensive urine," "ascorbic acid
is synthetic and it's not the same as whole food vitamin C," "vitamin
C causes kidney stones," "vitamin C causes miscarriage,"
"vitamin C depletes other vitamins and minerals." And, of course,
there's the government assertion that humans will be just fine if they take 90
mg of vitamin C per day.
All
of those, and other myths and lies, support the status quo that Linus Pauling
was threatening with his little 1970 book. The myths are highly effective, if
not comforting, to the tribal thinker who doesn't want to consider that
messages from the tribe's trusted media sources, government, and industry may
be propaganda. Fully grasping the truth would ultimately shatter their place in
the tribe, and they have invested heavily in being good, comfortable members of
their chosen tribe. So an adult's brain, typically, but not always, has the
ability to block out any information that threatens their lifestyle in their
chosen tribe.
Children need to be carefully taught
The
child's mind is different. They have just arrived here and are still learning
what tribe they belong to. Their world view is forming and they are receptive
to all kinds of lessons, including Dr. Seuss's lessons about questioning
preconceived notions.
I
have often wondered how my life would have been different, how the world would
have been different, if "Green Eggs and Ham" by Dr. Seuss would
have shared space on my bookshelf with an equally colorful children's book
authored in an entertaining way by Dr. Pauling or Dr. Stone or Dr.
Klenner or Dr. Cathcart. It would have taught me about my need, my
future pregnant wife's need, and my children's need for daily intake of
megadose vitamin C. I can just see myself as a child, sitting next to mom,
having her read the pages, and then jumping up and running to take my next dose
of vitamin C with enthusiasm. I can envision a really good life for a child who
has had that information drilled in early on.
The
lesson "take enough vitamin C to be symptom free whatever that amount may
be," stated often by our Editor-in-Chief, is easy children's book
material. And, the fact is, that if a child starts out as a vitamin C baby (per
Klenner), is supplemented as a baby frequently each day, and then learns to
take grams of vitamin C several times a day, every day, and much more when
sick, they grow up with the potential to create a much different world than the
world that we now live in. Irwin Stone called them "homo-sapiens
ascorbicus, a robust human mutant" and that's exactly the mutant
tribe that has the power to change things.
A
simple lesson, presented correctly to our children, while their minds are
receptive to being part of the orthomolecular tribe that Pauling
started, may be just what it takes to make the world a much better place 50
years from now.
We are very thankful to the site,
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