My Theory on Why Intramuscular C Works

First, a little background.

My medical education is based on too many consultations with doctors and pharmacists, years of subscribing to fashion magazines to find out the latest research on collagen (skin care is big business), trips to the Los Angeles Public Library, my NASM training and slowing plowing through millions of PubMed articles. Eventually I will get to the end of those.

Here is some great learning I want to share with you.

Vitamin C increases collagen.

Vitamin C protects the collagen you have.

See, it is even in a fashion magazine!

From Elle magazine.

I am an expert on Ehlers-Danlos because I have lived a miserable lifetime very severely affected by it. Born in pain, weak as a young child and life totally ruined by it by age 14, I have particular insight.

Have you spent time with us? We are hyper people, rather ADDish, and tend to be hypermetabolizers of medication.

As is typical for us, I pee out all the salt I take in. This gives me chronically low blood pressure, low blood volume, weakness, dizziness and dehydration, unless I pour a ton of salt on everything I eat. Yum! And then I don’t feel weak and sickly.

Perhaps I waste Vitamin C too?

Perhaps I do not absorb much of it all to begin with?

Perhaps my bad gene is messing up how I metabolize C? 

Perhaps when C is injected into my fat, my body has time and opportunity to use it.

There you have it. That is my best theory on why I benefit from injected C, not oral, not intravenous (actually I haven’t tried IV, see why below).

No test exists to tell us if this is what is happening, so this only a guess, my guess. Feel free to nominate me for Nobel Prize or an honorary medical degree. Or just give my Less Flexible Facebook page a like.

I have never tried intravenous ascorbic acid. I never did because the medical opinions I got were that IV C is not a great idea.

A high dose, 15-25 grams of C through an IV line, straight into the blood stream, well, how much could the human body to take in and use effectively? Healing takes time. Collagen takes weeks and weeks to repair. The human body cannot store ascorbic acid. I have a body full of weak collagen. My collagen needs long-term support. Healing takes time. 

One would be liable to get a blood sugar crash after such a big dose through an IV line. That is a known side-effect. 

IVs of any kind expose you to aluminum, so best to choose another administration method when possible. This is why I eat tons of salt rather than receive IV saline fluid. Plus the convenience factor.

Let’s see what the drug insert on injectable Vitamin C says.

Mylan drug facts on injectable ascorbic acid.

Burn victims and people who need wound healing are treated with small doses daily or even multiple times per day, if they are really desperate. Hey, I am desperate!

This is where we came up with my dose. I do usually 1.5 grams per day, unless I feel the start of a cold or have injured myself. Then, I will do another shot, or even two if I feel that weakness and lung tickle of pneumonia coming. Seems to help.

My EDS friends who have tried IV Vitamin C have not benefitted like I have from regular shots. But it was not the shots alone. The shots made me able to benefit from exercise, catch up on sleep, heal. It is not like I had a shot of C and got back to life. But I was totally rundown and disabled so maybe you are not. Maybe you would benefit sooner. After six months of daily shots, I went back to physical therapy and this time I benefitted. Six months after that, I started my titrate off long-term opiates. Unfortunately, getting off those drugs was devastaing to my health so then I had to recover from that. Long-term opiates probably should be for the terminal, not the chronically ill. But whatever. Those drugs helped a lot at the time, and here I am now, so whatever.  

Given everyday, in my backside fat, where the C can be slowly absorbed and utilized, I make way better collagen than this body has ever made. How curious! It is obvious. I bruise like a normal person, which is rarely even if I whack something hard. My skin is stronger. I build muscle now. Yay!!

Not only better collagen, but I get widespread symptom relief from the torture of Ehlers-Danlos, symptoms of which overlap with scurvy, the official name for the disease of C deficiency. 

That is how ascorbic acid got its name. It is short for anti-scorbutic acid because it was this mysterious substance (Vitamin C) that someone finally noticed was the antidote for the dreadful disease of scurvy. I learned that at the Los Angeles Public Library. 

Here I am, unpacking enough C to last me almost 2 years. Yay!!

Enough C to last a long time.

I inject about two bottles per month. Crazy, right?

I have been doing this every day for 5 1/2 years. Crazy, right?

No problems with aluminum, injecting this much. Yay!!

In range!

No side effects except one bad infection at injection site.

Shots hurt sometimes. 

They make me able to live. Yay!!

Fair trade.