Jim, thanks for your question. And thank you Brunneria and others here for sharing what you've learned and are learning about vitamin C.
Like Brunneria, I also prefer taking a whole vitamin C. The vitamin C supplement I take is made from whole foods, sourced from berries and other plant based sources from around the world. But here's the problem...one capsule of my vitamin C only provides 120 mg.
When our body is being attacked by a virus, such as a cold,
our body's need for vitamin C increases significantly.
Dr. Cheng is currently taking 5 to 10 g of ascorbic acid a day by mixing in a glass - (not metal or plastic) - container smaller amounts of the powder in his cool or room temperature water,
not hot, and sipping on it throughout the day. I assume he's taking a higher amount because he is living and working in China right now.
In contrast, I'm currently only taking 2 g a day because I am currently working in a back office setting daily.
He describes how he takes his ascorbic acid in another video. Every two to three hours he mixes ascorbic acid into a glass of 8 to 16 ounces of water and sips it, which probably varies from 1 to 2 g (or 3 g) based on demands on his time. If he becomes ill, he will increase that amount.
Just as a quick aside, my understanding is that vitamin C administered by IV is in and out of the body within hours, perhaps 6 hours of completing the infusion, not sure of that, so that's why it's important to take in
smaller dosages throughout the day.
For a person how is ill, who needs to ramp up their dosage and is is awake for 15 hours. At hour 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15, if 3 g is administered every 3 hours, that would total to 18 g a day. Or if awake 16 hours, at hour 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16, if 2 g is administered every 2 hours, that would also total to 18 g a day.
I'll try to write more about this over the weekend. Have to go to work now.
For now, there are two videos by American internist and nephrologist Suzanne Humphries, MD that offers a good overview of what's known about the therapeutic use of vitamin C...
Another source of information is Thomas E. Levy, MD. He has written extensively on Vitamin C. Here's his bio...
https://riordanclinic.org/staff/thomas-levy-md-jd/
And here's what The Riordan Clinic is recommending to their patients specifically for CORVID-19...
https://riordanclinic.org/2020/03/covid-19/
Other sources are Andrew Saul, an Editor-In-Chief for
www.orthomolecular.org who has studied and used vitamin C throughout his life. Here's just one article from that website on vitamin C...
Vitamin C Questions: Answered
http://www.orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v14n12.shtml
