The Benefits of Vitamin C in Cancer Treatment

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• Examples of holistic therapies used for cancer include vitamin C alone and in combination with Artesunate (a malaria medication) and/or hyperthermia, curcumin, melatonin and mistletoe

• One key point to be made about holistic oncology is that the earlier you start this kind of treatment, the better. Most patients who seek alternative strategies have already done tremendous damage to their bodies with one or more rounds of chemo, which makes natural remedies less capable of achieving complete healing

• Whole food vitamin C and IV vitamin C serve two different functions. Whole food vitamin C is not suitable for the treatment of cancer, but does wonders for general health support, whereas high-dose vitamin C with sodium ascorbate has powerful drug-like effects suitable for acute and severe infections and cancers

• Vitamin C has a wide variety of precision effects, which can be generally classified into genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and immunomodulatomic effects

• Vitamin C is typically thought of as an antioxidant, which is true orally and at lower doses, but in high doses, it becomes a pro-oxidant, and that’s actually what allows it to kill cancer cells and gives it its significant antiviral and antibacterial properties

In this interview, Dr. Nathan Goodyear discusses the benefits of vitamin C in cancer treatment. We are both scheduled speakers at the Vitamin C International Consortium Institute’s annual conference in Tampa, Florida, September 9 and 10, 2022.

Goodyear started out as a gynecologist and pelvic floor surgeon. Once out of residency, however, he noticed that a lot of what he’d been taught in medical school didn’t work. Then, in 2006, he developed pheochromocytoma, a rare type of tumor that develops in the adrenal gland, causing it to excrete high amounts of norepinephrine, which in turn causes extremely high blood pressure and heart rate.

Holistic Oncology

That experience pushed him to make the transition into the field of cancer. The last five and a half years, he’s been working with Brio-Medical, a holistic cancer clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, of which the last six months he has served as medical director. He works with four other physicians — two medical doctors and two naturopathic physicians.

Examples of Holistic Therapies for Cancer

Examples of holistic therapies used for cancer include vitamin C in combination with artemisinin or artesunate (a primary malaria medication). This combo is very good for prostate and breast cancer in particular. Curcumin and melatonin both also have significant anticancer effects. Goodyear likes to combine hyperthermia with high-dose vitamin C and curcumin.

Mistletoe is another excellent cancer treatment. I’ve previously interviewed Dr. Nasha Winters about the use of mistletoe in oncology, so for more in-depth information, see that interview.

One key point to be made about holistic oncology is that the earlier you start this kind of treatment, the better. Unfortunately, most patient who seek alternative strategies have already done tremendous damage to their bodies, particularly the immune system, with one, two or even three rounds of chemo, which really impairs your body’s ability to heal naturally.

How Cancer Kills

Typically, it’s not the initial cancer that kills you. What kills is when the cancer spreads (metastasizes) to other areas of your body. Also, most cancer patients don’t actually die from the cancer, but from the treatment that conventional oncologists use to treat the cancer.

Vitamin C Basics

The story of vitamin C demonstrates that the devil’s in the details. Roughly 50 years ago, Linus Pauling demonstrated that intravenous vitamin C (10 grams a day for 10 days) improved cancer survival. Later, researchers at the Mayo Clinic tried to reproduce the results, but didn’t use IV vitamin C. They instead gave 10 grams orally, and found no benefit.

In the academic battle that followed, Mayo won and for the next several decades, the conventional thought was that vitamin C doesn’t work. That began to change around 2000, when Dr. Ping Chen, a conventional oncologist started looking into vitamin C and publishing papers on its pharmacokinetics.

Since then, there’s been a combination of pushback against the idea that vitamin C works on the one hand, and on the other, growing research that points to vitamin C’s effects as powerful as any drug.

Vitamin C Is Natural but Has Drug-Like Effects

Vitamin C does have drug-like effects, and I like to refer to it as a pharmaco-mimetic, but it’s still a natural biological molecule that cannot be patented, and hence cannot be a drug. Also, to be clear, there are distinct differences between whole food vitamin C and ascorbic acid.

They really have two very different purposes. Whole food vitamin C is not suitable for the treatment of cancer, but does wonders for general health support, as it interacts favorably with copper and iron in your cells and mitochondria. I only recommend and use high-dose IV vitamin C in cases of acute infection or illness, as it does have very potent “drug-like” effects. Goodyear adds:

Oral Versus IV Vitamin C

When treating cancer, IV needs to be used because you simply cannot take the high dosages required orally. Doses over 10 to 20 grams of ascorbic acid will cause loose stools when taken orally, but IV administration bypasses the limitation of the gut. It also allows the vitamin C to get directly into the blood to the extracellular fluid, into the tumor microenvironment, to penetrate the tumor and saturate the entirety of the tumor.

Now, if you feel like you’re coming down with an infection, such as a flu or cold, oral vitamin C is plenty adequate. Oral dosing of vitamin C, using a nonliposomal product, can double your blood level of vitamin C, and using liposomal vitamin C — which is what I’ve been recommending for years — can increase it three- to fivefold — up to about 300 micromolar. So, liposomal vitamin C can make a big difference.

However, when you’re dealing with cancer, you need a minimum 1,000 micromolar, or 1 millimolar, in the extracellular fluid to kill cancer cells, which is why you really need to use IV. In the case of large tumors, or significant cancer spread, much higher plasma concentrations are required.

While the dosage is highly individual to each patient, as a general benchmark, Goodyear typically starts at 1.5 grams per kilogram, which for the average person would be somewhere between 100 and 200 grams per dose, three times a week.

So, to be clear, I do not advise taking ascorbic acid for daily vitamin C requirements. I strongly suggest you use whole food vitamin C which is far superior as a daily supplement.

Actions of Vitamin C

Vitamin C has a wide variety of effects, which can be generally classified into the following: genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and immunomodulatomic.

Using Pro-Oxidation to Kill Cancer Cells

When you think of vitamin C, you’re probably thinking it’s an antioxidant, which is true, but in high doses only available through IV, it actually becomes a pro-oxidant, and that’s what allows it to kill cancer cells and gives it its antiviral and antibacterial properties. Goodyear explains:

Melatonin for Cancer

Goodyear also uses melatonin for cancer, and monitors patients’ melatonin levels to ensure proper dosage. Typically, patients will start off with IV melatonin at a dose of 10 to 20 milligrams daily for two weeks, to get the level up as quickly as possible, while simultaneously taking oral melatonin at a dose of about 60 mg per day. The oral dose is then titrated upward, based on bodyweight and other parameters.

What Kind of Results Can You Expect From Holistic Oncology?

Goodyear and I cover a lot more ground in this interview than I’ve summarized here, so I encourage you to listen to the full interview. In closing, what kind of results might you get using a holistic approach to cancer treatment? Goodyear says:

As mentioned earlier, most of the patients have destroyed much of their bodies’ innate healing ability through repeated toxic treatments, which makes holistic treatment far less effective. Once chemotherapy damages your immune system it becomes extraordinarily difficult to treat it.

I know how panic-stricken one can get when given a cancer diagnosis, but if you’re in the early to mid-stages, you have virtually nothing to lose by going holistic FIRST. Your chances of total remission will be far greater than waiting until all other treatments fail, and you may be able to save your breasts and other parts of your body that would otherwise be cut out.

A Case History

To make his point, Goodyear offers the case history of a woman with bilateral breast cancer who’d been told she needed a bilateral mastectomy, bilateral radiation with chemo, and lymph node dissection — six to 12 months of brutal and toxic treatments that would have left her disfigured.

More Information

If you’d like to book an appointment, schedule a free phone consultation, or simply get more information, you can do that through his website, Brio-Medical.com.